


Tick Tock

by sal_si_puedes



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Graphic Description of Corpses, Heavy Angst, I swear - everything is going to be okay in the end, M/M, reversed MCD, reversed major character death, trust your author - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-06 23:37:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14658606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sal_si_puedes/pseuds/sal_si_puedes
Summary: When Harvey takes Gibbs's deal, goes to prison and dies in there, Mike is determined to do everything to bring him back, everything in his power - and beyond. He enlists the help of the only person he knows can give it, and together they set out to conquer fate.Written as a fill for the prompt #075 Tick Tock (05x15) as a contribution toBack Where You Belongover atWe Stay They Stay.[A/N: This fic is basically finished and it’s going to be around 22k when posted completely. I’ll start with the ‘prologue’ and the first two chapters and I’ll update a chapter or two every day as I go along and add the finishing touches. There will be 7 chapters alltogether, including the prologue and the epilogue.]





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lawsonpines13](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lawsonpines13).



> As always, thank you so much to [lawsonpines13](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/lawsonpines13) for the beta. YOU are the angel, just so you know!!!

_Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion._ \- Stephen Hawking

.

“Mike. You have to listen to me.”

The man with the haggard face and the hollow, burning eyes is breathless, and his fingers dig into the muscles of Mike’s upper arm, hard and painful. “You’ve _got_ to get to Gibbs fast, you have to be there before _he_ can. Hurry. _Run._ You must not let him go to jail, do you understand?”

“Who—”

“Harvey,” the man says. “Harvey is about to turn himself in, he’s on his way over here _right now_ , and you must not let that happen.”

Mike tries to pull his arm free but the other man only holds on tighter. He shouldn’t be here, that man, everything about him being here is wrong, impossible, and Mike feels chilled to the bone by those piercing eyes that beg him for mercy or for something else that is equally out of his reach.

“I—” Mike starts but the man, the impossible stranger, shakes him and takes a step closer, so Mike can smell his stale, tired breath. His eyes bore into Mike’s like bottomless fiery pits, and Mike feels as if he’s falling into nothingness. 

“This is vital. He must not go to jail, do you understand? Under any circumstances. You must _not_ let him go.”

“What—” Mike tries again, but he hisses in pain when the fingers dig even deeper, bruising his skin. His eyes are fixed on the haunted face of the man, his sunken cheeks, his cracked, dry lips and the immeasurable pain in his otherwise completely empty eyes. He’s drawn in by those eyes, he’s devoured by them, swallowed alive, by those eyes that are so strange to him, yet so chillingly familiar.

“He’ll die,” the man whispers, and an ice-cold shiver runs through Mike’s entire body. “If you let him go, he’ll die.”

*****


	2. Chapter 2

The door to the small bedroom opens quietly, and the thin stripe of light from the hallway cutting the bed in half slowly grows wider, gradually unveiling the sleeping man only partly covered by the sheets. His t-shirt has ridden upwards, exposing a patch of pale skin, and his hair is in a sweaty mess. He stirs awake as soon as the woman has stepped through the door.

“Rachel?” He murmurs groggily, propping himself up to a half-sitting position, and runs his hand over his face. “What—”

Rachel is in her night-gown, her bathrobe still hanging open, and her hair is loosely braided, the braid a dark, heavy rope slung over her shoulder. She grabs hold of the hems of her robe and wraps them around herself, biting her lips.

In the dim light of the hallway’s lamp Mike can see that her face is as white as a sheet and wet with tears.

“Rach,” he sighs, pulling his knees up and running his fingers through his hair. “What is it?”

_Again_ , he wants to add, _what is it again_ , but he knows better by now. He has been sleeping in the guest room for the last couple of weeks, ever since Harvey has signed the deal, Anita Gibbs’ dirty deal, that sent him to Danbury just twenty seven hours later, ever since he has told Rachel that the wedding was off. There have been too many nights like this, Rachel silently crying and the hours filled with endless discussions that haven’t led anywhere yet, that most likely never will lead anywhere, and Mike just wishes that Rachel’s apartment-hunting endeavors is finally going to be crowned with success. They can’t go on like that much longer. He can’t.

“I’m tired, Rach. Can we—”

“Mike,” she whispers, and her voice is thick and heavy with pain. “I’m so sorry.” She takes a tentative step closer, then another one, and then she stops in her tracks and covers her mouth with her hand.

“I know,” Mike says, taking a slow, deep breath and lying down again. “Let’s talk about this when I’m home tomorrow night, okay? I have an early meet—"

“Mike,” she says again, and the suddenly razor-sharp tone in her voice shakes Mike wide awake within the blink of an eye. Her voice has never sounded downright cruel, but now it does. He’s heard a voice like that only once before. “There’s something…” She falls silent and takes another tiny step towards the bed. 

She’s close enough now that Mike can see that she’s shaking.

“Rachel,” he says again, and his voice sounds suspiciously hollow, even to himself. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Mike,” Rachel whispers, and two fresh tears roll down her cheeks. She closes the distance to the foot of the bed and slowly sits down. “I’m so sorry, I…”

A violent shiver runs through her, and her hand flies to her mouth again to stifle a choked dry sob.

“What is it, Rachel,” Mike says once more, lifting his hand and reaching out for her. “Rach, you’re scaring me, tell me—”

“Harvey’s dead,” Rachel blurts out, her words cut off by another anguished sob.

From one second to the next Mike’s entire body is filled with burning ice and he’s in free fall. He shakes his head and clears his throat. Why is his mouth so dry all of a sudden? And what on earth is that piercing noise?

“Wha—” He clears his throat again and runs the back of his hand over his mouth. 

Rachel nods, slowly and mercilessly.

“What?”

“The warden called. He… He was stabbed. In the showers, he was stabbed in the showers and… And you’re his lawyer and… in case of emergency and…”

“That’s impossible,” Mike whispers when Rachel falls silent once more, bile rising in his throat. He swallows. “He… it can’t be. I only saw him this afternoon, and…”

“I’m so sorry,” Rachel says again, looking at him with tender eyes and reaching out for him, but before her fingers can touch his skin, Mike is out of his bed and in the adjoining bathroom, emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. His entire body heaves with the cramps and spasms that turn his stomach, that turn his whole being inside out, and through the force of his violent retching he hears someone moan and scream, he hears someone hitting something again and again, and even when it dawns on him that that someone is him he doesn’t stop. He can’t, it’s beyond his reach. 

When the heaving finally ebbs, he collapses onto the cold tile floor. His ears are ringing, and he closes his eyes. When he opens them again a few moments later, Rachel is crouching next to him, wiping his sweat-drenched hair from his forehead with small, gentle fingers.

“It isn’t true,” he croaks, and another spam shakes him, but there’s nothing left inside of him that he could throw up. “It—It can’t be true… Please. It’s not true, please tell me it isn’t true…”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and he wonders why she keeps saying that. It doesn’t make any sense. “They… They need someone to come in and get his things, I guess, or to... I don’t know, but… And you’re his lawyer so they called here. I—”

“Does…” Mike squeezes his eyes shut so hard he sees stars. “Does his family know? His mother? M—Marcus?”

“I’ll find out,” she whispers. “Don’t worry about that now. Mike, I—”

“Leave me alone,” he cuts her short and jerks his head away from her tentative caresses. “I’ll go there tomorrow. Tell them.” When she doesn’t move, he closes his eyes again. “Leave me alone,” he whispers, biting his lips. “I need… I…”

He’s surprised that she does, after a while. He’s so cold he’s unable to feel how hard the bathroom floor is, he’s even too cold to shiver. He’s too cold to notice that Rachel must have come back at some point of time and that she must have covered him with a thick, woolen blanket. For a moment he thinks he’s even too cold to breathe, but of course life isn’t that merciful.

Mike doesn’t know how long he lies there, his lips and cheeks sticky with vomit and tears and his boxers soaked, but when he gets up again the skies outside are turning gray and his eyes are completely dry.

When Mike gets up from that bathroom floor, he is a changed man.

*****

At first, they say they won’t let him, but Mike can be very demanding, very persistent and deadly convincing when he has set his mind on something he wants, and he wants to see Harvey’s body. 

It’s an ongoing investigation, they say, and it’s not permitted that anyone who isn’t part of the medical, procedural or investigative staff involved in the case see the body, not until—

“I can’t leave you alone in there,” the Detective says when he leads Mike to the OCME’s mortuary where Harvey’s body has been sent to only a few hours earlier for further examinations and the autopsy. His voice is calm and low, and Mike’s fists clench and his jaws grind so hard that he’s sure the Detective must be able to hear it. “I’ll have to stay in the room, but—”

“Yeah,” Mike grits through his teeth. “I know.” His breathing is measured, determined, and inside of his jacket’s pocket his fingertips just linger against the soft leather of Harvey’s wallet. It’s nestled there like that’s where it belongs, as if it has always sat there or at least very often, so smooth against the soft cloth, only it hasn’t. It has found its way there only this morning when Mike collected it at the front desk of Danbury’s visitor entrance’s reception. It is warm and heavy, and Mike takes a deep, shaky breath. He can do this. He needs to do this. It’s the least he can do, it’s the only thing he can do, and he owes that to the man who has given him everything. He owes that to the man whom—

“The case we’re working against Frank Gallo still isn’t very solid,” the Detective tells Mike as they walk along an endless corridor towards a two-winged stainless-steel door with two small, checkered windows in its upper half. “Nobody on the inside is talking. Well, at least not yet. We—”

“I don’t want to know,” Mike says and raises his chin a little. “Don’t,” he says when the Detective takes a breath to speak again. “Don’t.”

They walk the rest of the way in silence, and the Detective holds the door at the end of the corridor open for Mike to step through. He fishes for a key in his pocket and pushes it into the keyhole of the first door to their right. It’s cold down here, and Mike wraps his arms around himself and bites his lips.

“The autopsy team is on its way over here,” the Detective says. “But… well, take your time. The body’s…,” he Mike a quick, doubtful glance before he turns the key. “He’s not looking too good, though. He’s… he got smashed up pretty bad before they…”

Mike closes his eyes for a second and exhales shakily. His fingertips ghost over Harvey’s wallet for another second or two before he withdraws his hand from his pocket. Then he nods. “Okay,” he says and flinches as the Detective turns the key around and opens the door. He takes a deep breath and steps into the cool, dark room that smells of disinfectant and a mixture of other things Mike doesn’t recognize or can’t name. Once more, bile rises in his throat and for a moment Mike thinks he’s going to throw up again, but he manages to swallow it down, rubbing his sweaty palms against his aching thighs. “Okay.”

There’s a stainless-steel table about halfway across the room and there’s a body lying on top of it, covered by a stale green sheet. Mike can’t bring himself to look at the feet sticking out at the one end. He thinks as long as he doesn’t look at the feet, as long as he doesn’t see that small paper tag, he’s probably going to be okay.

The Detective hesitates. The pale, sterile light from the strip lights on the ceiling flickers a little, and the shadows cast by the wrinkles of the green sheet move across the body like the bony fingers of a ghost.

“The sheet,” Mike says, and his voice echoes a bit in the cold room, just like his and the Detective’s steps have echoed on their way in here mere moments ago. “The sheet,” he repeats when the Detective doesn’t move, and waits.

Finally, the Detective sighs and takes a step forward. He reaches for the hem of the sheet and slowly pulls it back.

Mike bites the insides of his cheeks so hard he tastes blood.

This isn’t Harvey, that pale, motionless, battered body lying on that table in front of him can’t possibly be Harvey. Harvey, now, Harvey is beautiful. What is lying there on the table in front of him is a travesty. 

Mike sways, and his hand reaches out to grab hold of the steel table’s edge, his fingertips stabilizing him against the bitingly cold metal.

“Mr. Ross?” The Detective carefully takes a step closer. “Mr. Ross, are you—”

“I’m—” Mike pauses and blinks. He shakes his head a little and blinks again. There’s that weird sound in his ears again, a hollow static and some high-pitched buzzing sound, and he has to blink again and again to be able to see through the fog clouding his vision. He holds his hand up against the man in his back. “I’m all right,” he finally manages to croak and he can feel the Detective step backwards again. 

His eyes never leave the body in front of him, Harvey’s body, Harvey’s beautiful, battered body. 

“I’m going to fix this,” he whispers, swallowing around the razor-sharp pain in his throat. He coughs. “I’m going to fix this. I swear. Harvey, I swear. I _will_ fix this.” His voice sounds much firmer now, much more like himself again. He nods. There is still one more thing left that he can do and he knows what he has to do to get it done.

When he turns around, the Detective’s face has turned ashen and he stares at Mike with wide, bottomless eyes. 

Mike nods again and walks straight towards the morgue’s exit. His knees give in as soon as he’s out in the corridor but he won’t let the Detective help him up. He holds his hand up against him again, his only means of defense, and struggles back up to his feet by holding on to the whitewashed wall, by clawing his way up against the dry, rough surface.

“You were his ‘in case of emergency’ contact, of course,” the Detective says when Mike is standing upright again. He’s talking as if he’s addressing a small child or maybe a very sick person, Mike thinks, and it makes his insides clench in anger, but he can’t muster the strength to reply. “But his family… They’ve already claimed the body. They’re having the funeral home collect it as soon as—”

“Good,” Mike interrupts, straightening his back and gathering all his remaining energy to climb up those two flights of stairs and walk out of the building. He needs air, but his throat seems to be far too narrow to breath. “Good.”

Mike knows what he has to do and he knows that nothing is going to keep him from doing it. Nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

When the door finally opens after what feels like hours of banging against it to Mike, the man peering through the narrow slit is pale and there are dark circles under his eyes. He blinks owlishly.

“Benjamin,” Mike says and nods, and the man on the other side of the door flinches.

“Michael.”

Benjamin blinks again and shifts a little, clearing his throat. “I am so sorry.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mike says and kicks the mat in front of Benjamin’s door with the tip of his shoe. “Listen—” He cuts himself short very abruptly, so Benjamin frowns and takes a small step backwards. “I need your help.”

It takes Benjamin another couple of seconds to finally step back into the hallway and open the door for Mike to come in. He silently ushers Mike along the corridor into an almost completely dark living room. There’s a huge desk with a couple of palely glowing computer screens in one corner, cables everywhere, and that’s the only light source in the entire room.

There’s a faint buzzing in the air, and for a moment Mike thinks he can feel his skin prickle and the hairs at the back of his neck rise. He has come to the right place.

The room is squeaky clean. There’s no clutter, not even a spec of dust on the glass surface of the coffee table, no plants, no paintings or pictures on the walls except for a huge whiteboard right next to the desk with the computers and a large print of a map of the London Underground from the early nineteen-hundreds Mike remembers having seen before, in a publication on the development of modern public transportation systems a couple of years ago.

Benjamin nods towards the sofa, and Mike drops the messenger bag he has been carrying on the floor next to his feet and then he slumps down on it, burying his face in his hands for a short moment before rubbing his eyes and looking back up at Benjamin, who’s still standing there, in the middle of the room, his arms hanging at his sides, staring at Mike with narrow, searching eyes.

“Beer?” Benjamin says, and Mike nods.

He thinks it is a bit strange that Benjamin even has beer, but then again, there’s the thing with the Egg McMuffin, so it’s not entirely out of the possible, really. He shrugs and takes the ice-cold bottle from Benjamin’s hand, stares at it for a while and then he takes a short swig. The sound of glass clinking against glass seems far too loud when he sets the bottle down on the coffee table in front of him, and he flinches.

“What do you need?” Benjamin asks and takes a deep swallow from his own beer.

Mike looks back up again. He watches Benjamin wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and then rub the back of his hand against the leg of his trousers with a slight bewildered frown of disgust on his face.

“What do you know about time travel?”

Benjamin raises his eyebrows, takes another swig from his bottle and snorts drily. 

“Enough to know that it’s impossible?”

“And that is where you’re wrong,” Mike says. 

Benjamin frowns and then he shakes his head. “Listen, Michael—”

“No,” Mike says, looking up at Benjamin. His eyes burn, and he’s so tense he could snap any second. “No. Just… no. You. You listen.”

After a small eternity, Benjamin nods as if in slow motion, crosses the room and sits down in the chair at his desk. Mike wonders if he’s ever sat anywhere else in this entire apartment. Probably not.

“Tell me what you need.”

Mike knows that Benjamin knows what is coming. He has asked him for it once before, in a metaphorical way, the second after they’d become friends. He knows that Benjamin knows that, in the end, he will succeed. Because that is infinitely more important now than it was back then.

Mike knows that Benjamin knows what is coming, and, accordingly, Benjamin takes another deep breath before Mike replies.

“I need you to build me a time machine.”

*****

The silence that follows is deafening and it lasts for minutes, hours, the rest of the day and well into the morning. It lasts till the sun comes up and even until it has clawed its way up into the heavens. 

Half an hour or so after Mike has told him, Benjamin has turned around in his chair and has faced the monitors. It has taken him another half an hour to pull the keyboard closer and thirty more minutes to start typing. 

Mike’s eyes never leave Benjamin’s back, and from time to time Benjamin reaches up, his shoulders tense, to scratch the back of his neck, as if he can feel the burn of Mike’s stare. 

“I need coffee,” Benjamin says somewhere around ten a.m. without turning around. “And Red Bull.”

Mike slowly rises from the sofa, his muscles painfully stiff and his skin as thin as paper, and makes for the apartment’s door with tentative, slightly shaky steps.

“Keys are in my pocket,” Benjamin mutters, and Mike finds them in Benjamin’s jacket hanging on a wardrobe next to the door. It’s the only jacket hanging there. “Do not lose them – and make sure nobody follows you inside when you come back.”

A little over twenty minutes later Mike returns with a grocery bag filled with Red Bulls and a cardboard tray with two large coffees and an Egg McMuffin he’s picked up at the McDonald’s around the corner. He sets one of the coffees down at Benjamin’s elbow, along with the Egg McMuffin, and opens the fridge to store away the cans. He finds it filled with at least twenty cans of Red Bull, all neatly arranged with their front sides facing the front, and there are two more bottles of beer. 

“How’s it going?” Mike asks and takes a sip from his coffee. It’s too hot and he’s made it too sweet but it burns his tongue in a way that tells him he’s going to feel it for at least half a day, and that’s all he can ask for right now.

When Benjamin doesn’t react, his eyes glued to the screens and his fingers flying over the keyboard, Mike shrugs and sips on his coffee again, letting the sweet-and-bitter taste fill his mouth. It burns his esophagus when he swallows it down, and liquid pools in his mouth, but Mike just breathes through it. He wanders around the living room aimlessly, his eyes searching for something to look at, and all they find is the map of the London Underground. 

He lets his eyes roam London’s streets and they take him to Hyde Park, to the dragon chasing a group of Londoners away and the hanged man in the upper right corner next to Marble Arch. Mike wonders how people that big have ever fitted into the Victoria and Albert Hall and he scoffs. 

“Have you—”

“Shhhhhh,” Benjamin makes without turning around. “This is not just simple rocket science, Michael.”

When Mike takes the next sip, his coffee has gone cold in his hands, he must have lost track of time. Frowning, he sets the cup down on the coffee table next to his half-empty bottle of beer and sits down on the sofa again. He reaches for his bag and pulls his laptop out. The almost inaudible sound of it coming to life again draws a distinct snort from Benjamin, and Mike remembers how he got it. “Sorry,” he murmurs, assuming he’s somehow hurt Benjamin’s feelings, and that’s the last thing he can risk doing right now.

Benjamin snorts again, still typing and staring at the screens. “I honestly cannot believe you are still using that old thing,” he says, and Mike’s eyes drop down to the laptop’s keyboard and he notices that Benjamin is right, the monitor flickers and the printed numbers, signs and letters on the keys have faded, at least the ones he uses most often. “It basically counts as an antique. You should try and donate it to the Smithsonian.”

Mike sets the laptop aside and pulls out a legal pad and a ball pen. He clicks the pen a couple of times but he immediately stops and apologizes when Benjamin coughs ostentatiously. He straightens his back and then he draws a line from the left side of the paper to the right, a straight line that, about halfway across the page, turns into a backwards loop. He stops before the loop touches the line at an earlier point and frowns. A couple of lines below this first sketch he starts again.

He draws a line from left to right, a long straight line, and he doesn’t stop until the line reaches the right margin of the page. The tip of his ball pen hovers for a moment, just hovers in the air, then Mike brings it back to the middle of the second line and starts to draw a loop from there. Again, he stops before the loop touches the main line, and his forehead scrunches up in another frown.

He starts a third time with a third line and tries the loop thing again when he’s approximately in the middle of the page. This time, he finishes the loop, draws it until it crosses its own line at the point where it emerged from the main one and only stops when the line reaches the edge of the paper.

“I need to be in the same place twice,” Mike mutters under his breath, and Benjamin sighs.

“Okay,” Benjamin says and stops typing for a moment. “This is not going to work.”

“What?” Mike’s head snaps up and his hand holding the pen jerks. Mike stares at the accidental line the pen has drawn almost all across the page from the bottom right to the top left of the sheet, cutting through all three of his lives. “You haven’t even—”

“I cannot concentrate when you keep talking at me all the time, Michael.” Benjamin says, and Mike exhales. Thank god. “What do _you_ know about time travel?”

Mike shrugs. “Not much,” he says, sucking his lower lip between his teeth and worrying it a bit. “I’m not a—Wait,” he interrupts himself, and his eyes go wide. “Stories. I’ve read a lot of stories where—”

“Write that down,” Benjamin gestures vaguely at Mike’s notepad. “Write down everything you know. Everything that might be useful.”

Mike nods and clicks the ball pen a couple of times again, ready to set to work.

“Do not do that, Michael,” Benjamin says and he sounds like a long-suffering parent. “And stay away from the white board, too distracting,” he adds before Mike can even finish the thought of getting up and walking over to where the whiteboard is hanging on the wall, empty and challenging. Benjamin has already turned back to his monitors and keyboard when Mike looks back at him, his shoulders stiff and his fingers flying. 

Mike doesn’t even know what Benjamin is doing over there at his desk and what the green symbols, letters and numbers racing across black screens may possibly mean. Benjamin might be shopping at Walmart for all Mike knows or looking at porn. He probably is.

“Okay,” Mike says and reaches for his coffee cup. He takes a long sip and winces. Even after all those years of long hours and all-nighters, even after at least twelve years of at times excessively smoking pot, he still hates the taste of coffee that has gone cold. And even though he doesn’t care, not one bit, it still makes him shudder inside. He takes another sip and begins to work.

*****

After a couple of hours, Mike has filled countless pages with narrow scribbling, memories of time travel stories from the _Mahabharata_ to _Star Trek_ and beyond. In the beginning, he has tried to put them into some kind of order but he hasn’t really been able to make up his mind about how to sort them (direction of travel, outcome, intention, equipment, ‘method’), so it’s rather a mess he has in front of and strewn all around him when he finally looks up from the pad in his lap.

Benjamin hasn’t moved, he’s still working feverishly at his desk, the soft clicking of the keys a constant rain of sounds washing Mike’s mind blank.

Mike’s stomach grumbles and he tries to remember when he has last eaten something. He’s not hungry and he doesn’t want to throw up again, but his thoughts are getting fuzzy and he knows that he needs to eat, and that he needs to eat soon.

The Egg McMuffin is still lying next to Benjamin on his desk, only half-eaten, but Mike can’t bring himself to rise and walk over there. He’s not going to steal Benjamin’s food, so he picks up his cell phone and orders a pizza and two large salads. He adds a six pack to the cart and touches the ‘order now’ button. The pop up tells him that his order will take approximately half an hour to arrive and that he should expect it to be there at 2:30 a.m.

“Hey,” he says and he’s surprised at how croaky and hoarse his voice sounds. He hasn’t used it for hours and now that he does it feels wrong. It hurts. “Benjamin? I ordered some pizza,” he says. He rises and stretches his back. His legs feel wobbly and his hand hurts from clawing around that pen for such a long time. “I—”

“Still talking,” Benjamin murmurs, shaking his head. “What did I tell you about the talking?” He doesn’t even look up but Mike thinks he can hear the faintest of smiles in his voice. “Plus, I am lactose intolerant.”

“Great,” Mike sighs, stretching again. “Then you can have the salad. One has bacon bits in it.” He looks around. “Bathroom?” He asks, suddenly becoming aware of how full his bladder is.

“Over there,” Benjamin vaguely nods towards a door to his left. “Door to the right.”

Mike murmurs a thank you and makes his way to the bathroom. When he switches on the lights, he tries to avoid looking at his reflection in the mirror over the sink as much as possible. He knows how he looks. He knows that his skin is ashen and that there are dark shadows around his eyes. He knows that his lips are cracked and drained of almost all color. He knows that his eyes are bloodshot and red, but when he sees himself, when he looks at himself, all he can see is Harvey, Harvey’s battered face, his closed eyelids, the sunken cheeks and all the cuts and bruises, the split lip and… He doesn’t dare look further. His stomach turns and he presses his hand against his mouth, swallowing against the bile rising in his throat once more. His knees go weak and he has to hold on to the sink to keep himself steady. His sweaty palm almost slips but he breathes through it, feeling the sweat running down his back slowly getting warmer and willing his body to stop shivering.

“I’m going to fix this,” he murmurs, never looking at his reflection. “Harvey, I swear. I will fix this, and everything will be all right.” He quickly relieves himself, then tucks himself back in and turns to wash his hands. When he’s done, he takes a deep breath and raises his head.

“I swear, Harvey. I can do this. Benjamin and I, we can do this. I won’t—I won’t let you. You goddamn asshole, I swear…”

The second half of the Egg McMuffin is gone when Mike returns to the living room. It takes the pizza delivery another quarter of an hour to arrive and when it’s there, Mike manages to eat three greasy, flappy slices. He washes the stale bites down with two bottles of beer and after staring at Benjamin’s back for another hour or so, he toes of his shoes and lies down on the sofa. His gaze wanders over the numberless yellow pages surrounding him and he sighs, wrapping his arms around his torso and closing his eyes. 

When he opens them again and rushes to the bathroom a couple of ours later to throw up the only half-digested pizza, Benjamin is still sitting in the same position.

He is _still_ sitting in the same position when Mike wakes up again in the morning, the pale daylight painting the room a blueish gray. 

There is an endless row of messages on Mike’s cell phone, voice and text, Donna, Rachel and a couple of unknown numbers, and Mike deletes them all without even looking at them. Then he deletes his email account and switches off his phone. He doesn’t need that kind of distraction, he needs to focus.

“Morning,” Mike murmurs, his voice still a little sluggish with fatigue. His back hurts and his head hurts even worse. He rummages through his bag and pulls out a bottle of Tylenol. With trembling fingers, he shakes a couple into his sticky palm and pops them in his mouth. He washes them down with the remains of the beer and when they don’t go down properly and he starts to cough, he reaches for the coffee cup still standing there amidst the yellow flood of papers and drains that as well. 

Benjamin has turned around in his chair when Mike is able to breathe normally again. “Morning,” he says, furrowing his brow. “Did you not just say that you ordered some pizza?”

Mike nods and struggles to his feet. He makes his way over to the kitchen counter and pulls two slices from the soggy box and onto the plate he himself used last night. 

His eyes already back on the monitors, Benjamin takes the plate from Mike and a can of Red Bull as well and he slowly starts to nibble on the cold pizza.

“What about your lactose intolerance?” Mike asks, and Benjamin just snorts. 

“Did you eat something?”, he asks, and Mike hums vaguely. “I mean, did you keep it down?”

When Mike doesn’t say anything for the longest time, Benjamin sighs and swings around in his chair again.

“Listen, Michael,” he says, folding his hands in his lap. “You need to eat and you need to sleep.”

“ _You_ don’t sleep,” Mike argues, gesturing at Benjamin and the screens weakly. 

“That is different,” Benjamin says. “The more time passes, the more difficult it gets. Going back, I mean. Hitting the exact moment.”

Mike bites his lips, and Benjamin sighs again. “I can give you something,” he says, and Mike can feel his eyebrows rise. “But I would rather not. You… It is not the smartest idea when you are… you know.”

“Oh, do _not_ look at me like that,” Benjamin says when Mike doesn’t reply. “You came here expecting a miracle. How do you think those happen?”

“So, you can do it?” Mike feels a strange flutter in his stomach, something other than the now ever-present nausea. “This is going to work?”

“Hard to say,” Benjamin says, turning back to his keyboard and monitors again. “Maybe. But this is going to need some time.”

“What do you need?” Mike is prepared to do anything, to make anything happen if it means that Benjamin will keep working.

“For you to shut up and let me get back to work,” Benjamin mutters under his breath, and Mike raises his hands in a gesture of defeat.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay, okay...”

*****

After that, Mike basically moves in with Benjamin. Not officially, but he sleeps on his couch and uses his soap and shampoo and his towels and stores his food in his fridge. He orders pizza for them both and comes and goes at all hours of the day and the night. After he has rung the door bell on the third occasion, Benjamin leaves a set of keys on the kitchen counter for him with nothing more but a raised eyebrow. 

They don’t talk about it. They almost don’t talk at all during those first couple of days, Mike noting things down on the sofa at first, then moving on to internet research, and Benjamin glued to his computer. Then, though, Benjamin begins to turn around in his chair more frequently and without any preceding disturbance from Mike. He turns around and chews on his lips, for example, and he says things like “Do you think…” and “If I…”. Then he falls silent and, after a while, he turns away again and resumes typing. 

Mike learns that Benjamin is actually pretty easy to be around as long as he keeps silent and the Red Bulls coming. He also learns that Benjamin is obsessed with backing up his work or probably his entire hard drives or servers or whatever it is he saves to that lead-heavy brick of an external device. He does it twice a day, like clockwork, and every twelve hours on the dot he sends Mike to an apartment three houses down the block where he has to knock on the second door to the left on the fourth floor, and a half-scary, half-nerdy guy with sunglasses on and the t-shirt of a Heavy Metal band Mike has never heard of takes the external hard drive from Mike’s hand with a frown and a nod and hands him another one before he closes the door again quickly, almost in Mike’s face. All that happens apart from the various cloud back-ups Benjamin does, of course.

One day, it’s maybe 10 p.m., Benjamin turns around in is chair for the third time that day, away from his monitors, and it takes Mike a while to notice that the typing has stopped. 

“What?” He asks, raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Could you come over here for a moment,” Benjamin asks,” and take a look at this?”

Mike rises and begins to walk, he walks over to the desk and bows down to look at the monitor Benjamin is pointing at, the one in the middle. 

“Look, if this…” Benjamin starts talking, and after a minute or so, Mike zones out. He doesn’t understand a thing, at least not anything in context. He gets the odd word here and there, sure, something he’s heard before or stumbled across during his own research, but Benjamin could as well be speaking Chinese. So, Mike lets his thoughts drift while Benjamin talks until there’s a recurring nudge at his arm.

“Are you even listening?”

“No,” Mike admits. “No, I wasn’t. Sorry. I don’t—”

“Okay,” Benjamin sighs and there’s so much defeat and resignation in his voice it startles Mike. 

“Wait,” he says when Benjamin’s hands return to the keyboards and nudges him back. “Show it to me again. Explain it to me.”

*****

As the days pass, Mike learns more and more about the science behind the search for potential means of time travel. He learns about the different ways physicists, alchemists and magicians have imagined it and about the ways they’ve tried before, he learns about mathematicians and miracle-workers. And even though he doesn’t understand everything, his memory and his deadly dedication make him catch up with at least some of the things Benjamin tries to do on his computer. 

After a couple of days, he’s even able to help during the few moments when Benjamin gets tired and loses track of the tens of thousands of lines of code he has written so far. 

He knows it must be hard on Benjamin to have someone living in his apartment besides himself, to have someone around twenty-four seven, someone who covers the coffee table in clutter and who keeps a pillow and a blanket on the sofa at all times of day and night. But even though he knows all that, Mike can’t bring himself to leave. He has tried sleeping in his own apartment during the second or third night, only to return to Benjamin’s place in the wee hours of the morning, his eyes bloodshot and his back sore and his head thrumming with pain. Ever since that night he has stayed. And Benjamin has never said anything, he has never complained. He never even raised another eyebrow.

The only time Benjamin comes as close to mentioning what is going on, there’s no trace of annoyance in his voice, just a mild note of concern.

“Are you going to go back to work any time soon?” He asks, tilting his head. He picks up a can of Red Bull, shakes it a little and frowns when he finds it empty.

“What work?” Mike says, and Benjamin nods.

It takes Mike at least a day, if not two to ask Benjamin in return.

“What work?” Benjamin echoes Mike’s reply from earlier, and this time it’s Mike’s turn to nod. 

They never talk about either of them going back to their lives from _before_ ever again.

*****

One day, Mike returns from a grocery run with not only two bags filled with what their lives are based on now, energy drinks, beer, yoghurt, bran bars, Tylenol, toilet paper, but also with a slightly tattered manila envelope.

“Bad news,” Benjamin says without turning around when he hears Mike entering the apartment. “The new approach most likely is not going to work either. There are still too many inconsistencies in the calculations. I seriously doubt any of this is going to work.”

“What do you mean,” Mike murmurs, stepping into the living room. “What did we do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Benjamin says and shrugs, his fingers still typing at a blinding speed. “I just honestly don’t think it is possible. I mean, time travel, Michael. It is just not—"

“The autopsy report came today,” Mike interrupts, setting the bags down on the kitchen counter. “The envelope was lying there on the kitchen table, back at home. Harvey… looks like he’s made arrangements, as if he’s made me his…” Mike swallows. This is beyond ridiculous, this can’t possibly be happening. “His ancillary executor. He never told me but… I don’t know. Anyway, Rachel must have gotten it from the mail and left it there for me in case I—”

“She does not know where you are?”

“No. I don’t know. She has to, I think. Maybe.”

Benjamin stops typing and turns around. He doesn’t say anything. All he does is look at Mike for a while with dark, tired eyes. His gaze darts to the envelope in Mike’s hand and then back to looking Mike in the eye.

Mike shakes his head. “I can’t.”

Still silent, Benjamin simply holds out his hand, and Mike hands over the envelope. His hand is shaking.

From his spot on the couch he watches Benjamin tear open the envelope and leaf through the files in the folder he pulls out. So many pages with letters and charts and graphs and pictures on them, such a long time it takes Benjamin to reach the last one. When he’s done he slowly closes the folder. He shoves it back into the envelope and sits back in his chair.

Finally, Mike dares to look up. Benjamin is as white as a ghost and he’s staring straight ahead with a blank expression on his face. 

“Do—” Mike clears his throat, and Benjamin flinches. “Should I read it?”

Benjamin shakes his head, silently and as if in slow motion. “No,” he whispers, and his voice sounds as blank as his eyes look. “No, you most definitely _should_ not. But I think you have to.”

“Yeah,” Mike murmurs. “Yeah, I know.”

“I am going to be…”

For the first time since they started working on this Mike sees Benjamin rise from his chair and not head for the bathroom or the fridge. Instead, Benjamin walks over to where Mike is sitting and holds out the envelope to him.

Mike stares at it for a while before he rises his head and looks up at Benjamin’s face.

Benjamin nods. He holds the envelope out a little bit further and nods. “I am going to… I will be outside for a little while,” he says, and Mike swallows before he takes the envelope from Benjamin’s hand. It’s so much heavier than it was when Mike brought it with him earlier even though Mike didn’t think that possible when he carried it over here.

“Okay,” he whispers, letting his fingers run over the brown paper. “Don’t… Are you going to come back later?”

“Yes,” Benjamin nods, and Mike swallows again. “I will just be outside for a little while.”


	4. Chapter 4

The cold, hard tiles of the bathroom floor burn against the sticky skin of Mike’s cheek, and a low moan escapes his lips when he hears the apartment’s door open and fall shut again. When he tries to rise to a sitting position or at least to prop himself up a bit, a piercing pain shouts through his head and his stomach turns and he falls back onto the floor, panting through the ebbing waves of pain. White lights flash before his closed eyelids and when they fade a little, there are the words, the charts, the pictures, and as hard as Mike has tried to get rid of them, to puke them out, to make them lose sense and meaning, they’re still there. He can still see them and he can still read them, even though he still refuses to fully understand what they stand for and what they truly mean.

Tears keep spilling from his eyes, and as much as he tries, he can’t keep his body from curling in on itself and shaking with the violent sobs that seize him over and over again and turn his body into a thousand shattered shards of pain.

“Oh god,” he moans, and “no”, but the one word he most longs to say, the name, Harvey, remains stuck in his throat. This isn’t him, this can’t have happened to him, it can’t. It won’t.

When Mike is able to breathe a little more evenly again, he tries to sit up once more but fails just like before. He pries his eyes open and looks up. Benjamin is there, standing a step or two away and looking down at him, his lips just a faint white line between his teeth. 

When their gazes meet, Benjamin’s eyes widen and he lets out the breath he was holding in a dry huff. He hesitates for a moment, but then he takes a step towards Mike and another, and then he crouches down and carefully places a hand on Mike’s upper arm, just very lightly touching him, very tentatively.

Mike flinches and moans, but after initially jerking his hand away as if he has touched something incredibly hot, Benjamin touches him again, carefully, gently, and Mike can feel fresh tears rolling down his cheeks. 

Benjamin hums and moves his hand up and down Mike’s arm once, slowly, carefully, and Mike’s breathing hitches. His body tenses up again and he presses the heel of his hand against his mouth to stifle the dreadful sounds that keep spilling out, the moans, the sobs, the pleads and the prayers. 

Benjamin keeps stroking Mike’s arms, making soft, soothing noises, and Mike inches a centimeter closer, just a tiny bit, just a tiny bit, but still.

Benjamin’s body radiates warmth, even though Mike can feel how tense Benjamin is, how much he doesn’t know what to do, how to help. The warmth is irresistible and Mike moves another tiny bit closer until Benjamin slides from where he has been kneeling to a half sitting position and reaches out for him. 

Mike half-crawls and Benjamin half-pulls him into his lap and against his chest, Benjamin’s arms wrapping around Mike’s shaking body after only the briefest moment’s hesitation.

The humming sounds Benjamin keeps making are low and soothing and they reverberate through Mike’s whole body until his sobbing and shaking finally ebbs.

“I am so sorry,” Benjamin murmurs, and Mike can feel his lips against his hair.

Mike just nods and takes some deep, shaky breaths, squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face against Benjamin’s chest. For a moment, his muscles are able to relax and his mind feels blissfully empty and numb.

“Come on,” Benjamin says and clears his throat after a while, and the sound of his voice makes Mike startle. “Come on, Michael. We should get you up and cleaned up. We need to get back to work. We need to… It is time.”

Mike lets Benjamin help him to his feet and his words hurt in his throat like rusty nails when he thanks Benjamin for the fresh clothes he lays out for him. For the first time in days, he takes a shower and washes his hair. 

“Do you...” he starts when he returns to the living room a little bit later, running his fingers through his still damp hair. “Do you really think it can’t be done?”

It hurts so much to ask this but he has to know.

Benjamin sighs and takes a deep breath. “I… I thought that,” he says and he even stops typing for a moment and turns to look at Mike. “But… But I am not sure anymore. I think I can do it,” he says, his jaws set and his eyes piercing. “There is something I want to try. I promise, Michael. We are going to fix this.”

For the first time since that night Mike feels something that almost resembles hope. He nods. “Thank you,” he murmurs, his voice still raw. 

Benjamin just nods, his eyes already back on the monitors and his fingertips brushing away some imaginary specs of dust from the keyboard.

Mike sits back down on the sofa and picks up his laptop. From the corner of his eyes he can see that goddamn envelope lying there on the table’s edge but he shakes his head quickly and pushes some papers a little to the right, at least half covering it up. He doesn’t need any kind of distraction now.

They never talk about it again, but their level of determination increases exponentially that day.

*****

“What language are you coding in?” Mike asks a couple of days later, looking up from his laptop’s screen after another long night of research and far too many Red Bulls. “I never asked, but I think if it’s in—”

“It is not,” Benjamin cuts him short without looking up or without stopping typing.

“How can you know what I wa—”

“Because,” Benjamin says, “It is none of them.”

“What?” Mike’s brows furrow, and he tilts his head, staring at the back of Benjamin’s neck, even though he has known every fraction of his hairline by heart for quite some time. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ ,” Benjamin says, his fingers stuttering briefly. “I mean that it is none of them because none of them are any good.”

“I don’t understand,” Mike says, and Benjamin sighs. 

“It is mine, Michael. It is mine. The others simply would not work, so I had to come up with my own.”

“You… When?”

“The day you came to me,” Benjamin says and the annoyance in his voice is palpable. “Now please shut up, Michael, and let me get back to work. Time is not getting any longer, if you know what I mea—”

Abruptly, Benjamin falls silent and all his movements freeze. He stays like that for what seems like forever, and for a moment Mike thinks he can feel a surge of electric energy in the air. 

Mike holds his breath. It feels as if time is standing still. “Benjamin?” He says when Benjamin still hasn’t moved two or three minutes later. “Are you okay?”

“Shush,” Benjamin hisses but he otherwise remains completely still. “Shut up. I need to think.”

Mike stays as silent and immobile as he can, trying to breathe through his mouth, inaudibly. It feels as if minutes stretch into hours until Benjamin speaks again.

“Where did you put that piece of paper?” He swirls around in his chair and his eyes are wide and glittering. When Mike doesn’t immediately react, his brows furrow and he squints. “That piece of paper, Michael? Where is it?”

Mike looks around himself and gestures at the mess of papers, pads and crumpled up and tossed aside sheets all around him, on the sofa, on the floor, on the coffee table, on the arm chairs… 

“Which one?”

“The first one,” Benjamin replies and his voice is very calm, very measured. “The one you first scribbled on, the one with the lines and the loops.”

“Huh,” Mike huffs. “Not a clue. Chances are I threw it away.”

“Never,” Benjamin says, and his eyes narrow, driving a chill down Mike’s spine. “Never throw away _anything_ that might be of such vital importance.”

Mike looks around Benjamin’s living room and shrugs. “Says the man who—”

“Not many things that are not data are important,” Benjamin cuts in, a slight tone of impatience creeping into his voice. “That piece of paper _is_.”

“Okay,” Mike raises his hand in a gesture of defense and apology. “Okay, I’ll find it.” He starts rummaging through his piles of paper, his stacks, starts unfolding folded sheets, smoothening out crumpled ones. 

After a couple of moments, Benjamin rises and joins him and he makes quick work of Mike’s if invisible yet existent order by just tossing things aside and turning them over, purposefully ignoring Mike’s slightly weak protest of “Hey! What the…” 

In the end, it’s Mike who finds it. It has slipped under the sofa almost entirely, only one tiny corner still sticking out. 

“Here,” Mike yells in triumph and holds the sheet up in the air. “Got it!”

Benjamin snatches it from his grip before he can even blink, almost tearing it in two. He drops down onto the couch next to Mike and stares at the scribblings without blinking.

“What did you say back then?” He asks, and Mike frowns. “When you were drawing those lines and I told you to shut up?”

Mike purses his lip and watches Benjamin trace the lines and the loops with the tip of his index finger.

“I need to be in the same place twice,” he repeats his words as if in a haze, his words resounding with a strange viscosity as if he’s hearing himself under water, and Benjamin nods.

“Exactly,” he says, tracing the scratch Mike’s pen had made when Benjamin had told him to be quiet and his hand had jerked accidentally. It cuts through all the lines and loops. “And that, Michael, is where you were wrong.”

Mike waits. He knows by now that sometimes it’s just best to wait and let Benjamin continue in his own time and without being nudged, however subtly. That can take a while, he knows that, too, he has learned that the hard way, but he hopes to god that that’s not the case this time. His heart is beating wildly in his chest, his pulse is racing and his lips are as dry as they can be. He licks them, and Benjamin looks up from the patterns his fingers have been tracing and their eyes meet.

Mike’s stomach lurches. 

There is something glittering in Benjamin’s eyes that captures him and that scares him to the bone at the same time. 

“You do _not_ have to be in the same place twice,” Benjamin says and lowers his eyes again. His finger slowly begins to trace that accidental diagonal line once more. “You need to be in two different places _at once_ , at the same time. Look.” He goes back to the lines and loops. “Here and here.” 

Mike’s eyes follow Benjamin’s finger again and again, and Benjamin doesn’t stop before Mike sees it.

He gasps. Benjamin is right. There is not one sketch in which the line, time, doesn’t curl in on itself, thus going back to where it came from – Benjamin has picked up a pencil somewhere and is drawing coordinate grids over the lines – and back to a point where they reach the same point on the x axis again, just higher up or further down. 

“And I was wrong,” Benjamin whispers when he’s finished, “when I just said that time does not get any longer.” He brings the pencil to the lowest point of the accidental scratch and retraces it with careful deliberation. Mike has never heard him speak that slowly. “Well, _usually_ it does _not_ , but it can. All we need to do is find a way to dilate it.”

Mike’s brows furrow. “What? But I don’t understand,” he says. “Didn’t Einstein _prove_ that time isn’t absolute in the first place? Didn’t you just tell me the other day that time dilation—”

“Yes, _in theory_ ,” Benjamin interrupts, looking back up at Mike. “But this… this is another thing. As far as I know nobody has ever tried to— I know now what needs to be done, Michael. I know now what I need to do to make this work. I swear I can make it work.”

And he starts to explain. He loses Mike about three sentences in, but Mike doesn’t care. He feels as if he’s flying. His eyes dart back and forth between Benjamin’s glittering eyes and his incredibly fast-moving lips and he simply zones out the stream of words and numbers that keep pouring from Benjamin’s mouth. 

It can be done. He will definitely be able to bring Harvey back.

*****

During the next couple of days Benjamin speaks no more than five or six words, at least not to Mike. He does keep muttering under his breath almost constantly while he codes, though, at least that’s what Mike thinks he’s doing, but Mike can’t make any rhyme or reason of it.

So, Mike starts spending time outside Benjamin’s apartment, roaming the streets of Manhattan at night or wandering around almost empty supermarkets aimlessly. He buys more of the things they need to survive, energy drinks, beer, yoghurt, bran bars, Tylenol, toilet paper, but when the fridge and the cupboards are full, the countertop is covered in cans and there are five packs of toilet paper in the bathroom, Mike realizes that he can’t go on like this. 

He sighs, letting his shoulders sag. 

Benjamin groans low in his throat, and Mike flinches. “Sorry,” he murmurs and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “I’ll be outside for a little while,” he says, and Benjamin scoffs.

“We need toilet paper,” he says, and Mike isn’t sure if that was meant to be a joke.

He grabs his keys again on his way out and shivers when he steps out onto the street. It’s getting colder every day, fall is almost upon the city, and there’s that unique crispness in the air that Mike once used to love. He loses track of time for a while but when the daylight fades and the street lights begin to glow, he finds himself in front of Harvey’s building. He knows that the key to Harvey’s condo is in his wallet, it always is, and his hand goes to his back pocket automatically, reaching for it. He briefly wonders if it still fits.

The man behind the counter looks up when Mike enters the lobby and as soon as he sees Mike, his face falls.

“Mr. Ross,” he says, and there’s genuine empathy in his eyes. “My condolences.”

“Thank you, Raoul,” Mike says, and his voice sounds raw and foreign to him, but that might as well be because he hasn’t really talked to anyone since Benjamin had gone below surface a couple of days ago. “I was just—” He nods towards the elevators and shrugs. “I mean, if—”

“Of course,” Raoul replies and clears his throat. He nods, and a very faint smile appears on his face. “You can go up.”

“Thank you,” Mike nods back and heads for the elevators. He pushes the button and almost immediately the door to the nearest one slides open. The moment he is inside he closes his eyes and wills the doors to close as fast as possible before anyone else can enter the cabin. He’s lucky in more than just this respect – the elevator doesn’t stop once on his way up to the top floor.

When the doors slide open and he opens his eyes again, the way across the corridor to Harvey’s door seems endless. Mike swallows and nods to himself, then he steps out of the cabin before the doors can slide shut again. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay…”

He takes a deep breath, crosses the hallway and unlocks Harvey’s door without pausing, then he steps inside and lets the door fall shut behind him. He leans back against it and closes his eyes once more. His knees feel weak and his palms are wet with cold sweat. His heart is beating wildly in his chest and he squeezes his eyes shut so hard stars are dancing before him. Only when he is about to faint does he breathe again, and the scent that fills his nose is like a punch to the gut. A low moan escapes his lips and he balls his hands into tight fists and pushes them against his stomach as hard as he can, panting against the numbing pain.

He hasn’t been to Harvey’s place since that morning. The coffee mugs and the half-eaten bowls of cereal are gone and the bed is freshly made. There’s a thin layer of dust on the otherwise immaculate kitchen counter and on the coffee table, too. A bouquet of wilted flowers in a plain glass vase is standing on the dining table, and just as Mike looks at it, a faded petal falls from one of the flowers and lands on the table’s surface as if in slow motion. Maria must have been here after he and Harvey left that morning, and Mike wonders if she may have been back other times after that, as well. Maybe Harvey has left her instructions to come in once every two weeks or something like that, maybe he’s expected Mike to drop by every now and then and wanted everything to be ready and in top shape for him. That would be just like Harvey, doing something like that without ever telling Mike.

Mike shakes his head. Of course, Maria knows by now, she has to, and that’s why the flowers are wilted. Nobody in their right mind would come back here now, nobody would come and bring fresh flowers to a dead man’s home, so she’ll probably have cancelled Harvey’s instruction or maybe Lily has or Marcus or even Donna.

Mike’s mind is spinning, and the room is spinning around him as well. He feels as if he’s going to pass out, his mouth is dry and his eyes are swimming, and his whole body has begun to tremble. He tries to make his way to the bedroom but when he reaches the end of the kitchen isle, his knees give in and he can only grab hold of the counter’s edge the last second to slow down his sinking down to the floor at least a little bit. 

His ears are ringing and his vision is blurry and he doesn’t know how long he sits there, but when he comes to again, he’s lying on Harvey’s bed, his hands fisting into the fabric of the covers, his knuckles stiff and his face cold and sticky. He wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand and swallows. It feels as if there’s a razor blade stuck in the back of his throat, and when he swallows again, he tastes copper.

Breathing in and out as steadily as possible, Mike tries to relax at least a bit but it takes him what seems like an eternity to lose at least a little of the tension in his muscles. His body aches all over and when he lets his head roll to the side and inhales shakily, his fists clench even tighter around the fabric. Harvey’s scent. It’s still there.

He isn’t even sure if the funeral has taken place yet. It must have though, he thinks, and probably quite some time ago already.

Mike bites his lips and shakes his head. He blinks again and again, squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can, to avoid the images of that night, that morning, to avoid even a glimpse of them at all cost. None of those images may make it to the surface or Mike won’t be able to go on a second longer.

“Harvey,” he whispers. “I’m going to fix this. I promise…”

He’s about to rise when his phone buzzes.

_bring solder wire, Au80Sn20_ , Benjamin’s message reads, _and get back here yesterday_

Mike blinks. With Benjamin, you can never be sure if he’s making a joke or if he’s being dead serious. He’d better get a move on and find that wire.

*****

“Okay,” Benjamin says. “This should be it.” He turns around from where he has been working on the former kitchen counter, now workbench, and places a thin sheet of a gray-ish, semi-gloss metal on the floor in front of him. It’s maybe four feet wide and twenty inches deep.

“That?” Mike raises his eyebrows. “But there aren’t even any wires—”

“Please,” Benjamin snorts. “That is so H.G. Wells. This is the twenty first century, Michael.”

“Sorry,” Mike hurries to say, raising his hands briefly before he rises from the couch. “I didn’t mean to—” He stops dead in his tracks when Benjamin carefully steps onto the sheet and starts to bounce a little on the spot. When he looks up and sees Mike standing there, he snorts again.

“Relax, Michael. It has not been activated yet.”

“Why is it so wide,” Mike asks, taking a step closer and frowning. “I mean, I’m just—”

“Because,” Benjamin cuts in and jumps off the sheet with a strange little hop. “Because you will not be the only one going back.”

“I won’t?” 

“No,” Benjamin shakes his head and grins. “I made this, Michael, I. And I am going back as well. We will be the very first people ever to—” He stops, and the grin fades from his face. “Plus, there has to be somebody to bring you back once you have…”

“What do you mean, bring me back?”

“I mean, in case you do not want to go back. I am going to be there to make sure you will.”

“Huh,” Mike huffs, taking another step closer and crouching down. “What would happen if I didn’t come back?”

“That, I do not know,” Benjamin says, chewing on his lips and narrowing his eyes. “It can get complicated.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? I mean, you must have an idea, you must—”

“To put it very simply,” Benjamin interrupts, clearly a little annoyed by Mike’s questions. “If you do not come back here, you will have never been here.”

“What—” Mike blinks. “But I _am_ here.”

“I know,” Benjamin replies, pursing his lips. “That is why I can tell that I went back there with you.”

“Went.” 

“Went. Will go. It does not really make any difference.”

“Huh,” Mike makes again, touching the metal with the tip of his index finger. “What’s going to happen with the other me, then? The other us. When we go back, I mean.”

“Difficult to say,” Benjamin says, crouching down next to Mike. “I think we are going to merge with them somehow. When everything is done and we have gone back.”

“You _think_.”

Benjamin sighs. 

“So, you don’t know for sure,” Mike can’t help but ask, even though he is well aware that Benjamin can’t possibly know. His head is swimming with theories and apprehension and he desperately needs this to work. He needs to have gone back to be able to be here and—

“Michael.” Benjamin rises and runs his palms over his upper legs. “Nobody can know for sure. Because nobody has ever done this before.”

“Only we have,” Mike says and rises as well.

“Technically, no,” Benjamin says, chewing on his lip again. “But theoretically – yes.”

“What do you mean, _merge_?”

Benjamin sighs again, then he stretches and straightens his back. He walks over to the fridge and takes out two bottles of beer, opens them and hands one to Mike. He takes a long swig, wipes his mouth, swallows, and looks at Mike.

“I _think_ ,” he says, “that these ‘we’”, he gestures vaguely back and forth between himself and Mike, “will merge with the ‘we’ we visit back there at the point when we,“ he makes that gesture again, “come back. The other ‘we’ will have to walk all the way to the point of time at which we come back on foot, so to speak.”

“Huh,” Mike says for the third time, and once again he marvels at the way Benjamin’s mind seems to work, at the way the things he says seem to make complete and utter sense inside of that mind. “So, we’ll remember? After we ‘merge’?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Michael,” Benjamin sighs and takes another swig from his beer. “I am starving. Do we have any pizza?”

“We’re not going now?” Mike sets his bottle down on the kitchen counter next to a roll of wire and runs his fingers through his hair.

“No,” Benjamin shakes his head. “I need some sleep. And you need to come up with a plan. A point in the past you want to go back to. You probably will not have more than a minute to get your point across, so you better choose carefully.”

_“One minute?”_ Mike can feel his eyes go wide and his heart miss a beat. One minute – that’s nothing. 

“If you are lucky,” Benjamin nods. “This is highly volatile. Could be less than that.”

“Shit,” Mike murmurs and picks up his beer again. 

“Pretty much,” Benjamin says and empties the remains of his beer into the sink. “I am going to bed.”

Mike watches him leave the room and afterwards he lets his eyes wander over the chaos on the kitchen counter and then to the sheet of metal on the floor. One minute. Shit. That’s less than nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

“Okay,” Benjamin says and steps onto the metal sheet very close to where Mike is standing, a little too close for Mike’s taste. He needs space for this. He needs a little more space.

Mike’s whole body is tense and his palms are sweaty, his head is buzzing and he feels sick to his stomach. Standing that close to another human being is the last thing he wants right now, but he knows that this is necessary so he wills himself not to bolt.

“This should not take very long.”

“How’s it gonna feel?” Mike’s voice is thin and croaky. He has given Benjamin the coordinates of where he wants to go (and when), and they’re heading for Harvey’s condo a few months in the past. “Will it hurt?”

Benjamin sighs for probably the thousandth time since Mike has knocked on his door all those weeks ago.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mike says quickly, trying to appease Benjamin. “I know. Nobody has done this before, so how could you know? And it’s not that I’d mind, it’s just—”

“It should not hurt,” Benjamin interrupts, “but given the fact that the time we’re in, the time that we perceive will be _dilated_ , I can only assume that it _is_ probably going to feel… weird.” He turns to look at Mike and raises his eyebrows. “ _What?_ What did you expect?”

“How should I know?” Mike asks, breaking into a little grin. “Nobody has ever done this before, right?”

Benjamin grins back for a short moment but then his grin fades. “Ready?”

Mike swallows. “Yeah.”

“Remember, you have about sixty seconds before you have to be back on the mat.” Benjamin had already dubbed the metal sheet ‘the mat’ while he was working on it, and even though Mike has always thought that ‘the magic carpet’ or maybe just ‘the carpet’ would have been a much more fitting name, Benjamin had nipped that one right in the bud. “Or you cannot come back here. And if you _do_ not—”

This is Mike’s time to interrupt. “I know,” he says, even though he’s still not entirely sure he fully grasps what he’s talking about. “If I can’t come back I was never here so I can’t travel back to the past.”

Benjamin nods. “Ready?” He asks again.

“Ready,” Mike says and exhales, then everything goes dark.

*****

The room slowly spins into clear vision from a whirlwind of dark fog. Harvey’s living room is lit only by the light that falls through the half-open bedroom doors, but from what Mike can see from where they have materialized, the bed’s empty.

He steps off of the mat and looks around, trying to make out as much of his surroundings as possible. In the bathroom, he can hear a faucet being turned on and some faint clattering, and he’s about to run towards those sounds when a hand grabs his arm and holds him back. 

“Let go of me,” Mike hisses and tries to pull himself free, but Benjamin only grabs him tighter. “I have to—”

“Look,” Benjamin whispers and turns towards the kitchen counter, Mike’s eyes following his.

_October, 17th, 2008_

The date on the New York Times, two years before they first met.

“What—”

“He does not know you yet.” Benjamin is clearly trying hard to speak as calmly as possible, his voice just barely above a whisper. “He does not know who you are. There is no way you can explain this to him in under sixty seconds. In under forty seconds,” he adds, looking at the time piece on his wrist. “We have got to go back _now_.”

“But—”

“Michael,” Benjamin says. “He does not _know_ you. He is probably going to call the police. We have to go.”

“Shit,” Mike says, and before he knows what he’s doing, his fist hits the kitchen counter right next to the newspaper.

“Shit,” Benjamin hisses and pulls Mike backwards until they’re both standing on the mat again. “Are you out of your mind?” He gives Mike a deathly glare before he quickly taps the screen of the time piece and the room around them fades away again. 

“Hello?” 

Harvey’s slightly confused voice is the last thing Mike hears before the empty darkness envelopes him and they jump.

*****

“Shit,” is the first thing Mike says when he comes to again back in Benjamin’s apartment. He steps of the mat and begins to pace, rubbing his palms over his face. “Shit, shit, shit… What went wrong? We… What the _fuck_ went wrong?”

He turns to look at Benjamin who’s still standing there, frozen to the spot. Benjamin’s eyes are slightly widened, but otherwise his face is void of any kind of expression.

“Benjamin?”

When Benjamin doesn’t react, Mike says his name again, a little louder this time. 

“Benjamin!”

Benjamin startles and blinks. He quickly shakes his head, then he looks at Mike.

 _“What?”_ Mike doesn’t get why Benjamin keeps looking at him like that.

“We just travelled through time,” Benjamin says, his words as viscous as glue. “We travelled through time and we came back.”

Oh. That.

“Yeah,” Mike says, frowning. “But what went wrong? Why didn’t we—”

“We travelled through time and there is nobody I can tell about it,” Benjamin murmurs, completely ignoring Mike’s question. “I should be awarded the Nobel Prize. Or at least the—”

“Yeah, but—”

“Michael, you do not understand. This is groundbreaking. It… It has never been done before. Ever. We were the first.”

“Benjamin, we—”

“It worked,” Benjamin says and releases a shaky breath. “It worked.” He runs his fingers through his hair and hurries over to his desk. He sits down and begins to study the monitors. 

“Now all I have to do is to find out why it went wrong. Where I made the mistake. I need a Red Bull.”

Mike stares at Benjamin’s back for a moment, but then he walks over to the fridge to fetch Benjamin a Red Bull. He opens the can and sets it down next to Benjamin’s elbow, just like has done so many times before, but Benjamin is already so deep into his codes again that he doesn’t even react.

*****

“Maybe you should write him a letter,” Benjamin suggest over stale, greasy pizza a few days later. They’ve debated back and forth how to best approach the subject, how to best explain when all you’ve got is a minute – or less. “Write a letter and explain it in there. Hand him the letter or just put it onto his desk when he is not in the office.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and picks up an almost empty bottle of beer. “Or on his pillow when he’s—”

“Not funny,” Mike interrupts and it surprises him how much Benjamin’s carefree words hurt. A flood of images fills his brain, a whole sea of memories, evoked by just a single word, a jokingly made suggestion. “How far do you think we can stretch it?”

“Seventy seconds,” Benjamin says and drains the bottle. “Max. And that would be pushing it.”

“Hm,” Mike pulls his lower lip between his teeth and worries it. “That’s still not really a lot.”

“It is a miracle, Michael,” Benjamin says, and Mike sighs.

“I know. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convince him to _not_ take that deal in the first place. Not in a minute, not in seventy seconds, not in an hour. Not in this lifetime. He’d never let me go to jail for him, never.”

“Not even when he knows it will cost him his life?”

Mike shakes his head. 

“No.”

“Why? Why would anyone willingly die for someone else unless—”

Benjamin falls silent, and his eyes go wide. As if in slow motion he turns his head and his and Mike’s gazes meet. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Mike whispers. “ _Oh._ ”

“How about,” Benjamin says after a short pause and another bite of pizza. “How about you do not explain at all. How about we just keep him from signing that deal? Physically, I mean.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asks and straightens his back. His muscles hurt and his eyes are dry as sandpaper. He should try and get some sleep, but every time he closes his eyes, he sees Harvey’s face. “Shove him in front of a bus or something like that?”

“Please stop being so dramatic, Michael,” Benjamin snorts. “No, I mean, block the door or something like that. Tear the paperwork to pieces before he can sign it.”

“Not a chance. Gibbs has it in her briefcase and she’s not letting it out of her sight. Throw _her_ in front of a bus, then?”

This time, Benjamin simply rolls his eyes. “I am not going to commit a crime because of you,” he says. “No matter how much you want to reverse this. No, but did you not say he only got to Gibbs’ office the very last minute? Just before the ultimatum ran out?”

“Yeah,” Mike nods. “Yeah, I did. So, you think—”

“The elevator,” Benjamin says and gets up to fetch two fresh bottles of beer from the fridge. “If he has to take the stairs, it is going to be too late and he will not be able to sign the deal on time. The case goes to verdict and…”

“… and either the jury finds me not guilty or I go to jail. Me, not him.”

“Exactly,” Benjamin says and hands Mike one of the bottles. “Just do not let him get there in time.”

“That could work,” Mike says and takes a long swallow from his bottle. “That could actually work.” He purses his lips and casts a quick look at the monitors on Benjamin’s desk. “How long till we can try again?”

Benjamin tilts his head. “A day or two, now that I know how to fix that glitch.” He glances at his wrist watch, that for some reason he’s still wearing despite all that high-tech gear he owns. “Twenty hours if I work fast.”

“Twenty hours,” Mike says and stretches again. “Can I get you anything or—”

“No, thank you, Michael,” Benjamin cuts in and rises. He looks at Mike for a long time before he speaks again. “Set an alarm,” he says. “Be back in eighteen. Just in case.”

Mike nods. “’kay.” Once again, Benjamin has known what he’s going to do next before he himself has known. “You and Donna related by any chance?”

Benjamin frowns. “No. Why?”

“Never mind.”

Mike makes sure his keys are in his pocket and his wallet is there as well. He casts one last look at Benjamin, who’s already sitting at his desk again, working, and then he leaves.

*****

It takes them three more tries to get both the time and the place exactly right. Place doesn’t seem to be the main problem, though.

They materialize in the elevator all three times.

The first time it’s pitch black dark in the hallway outside and there’s nobody in the building. It must have been locked up for the night hours ago.

Mike takes a step off the mat and outside the cabin, looks to the left and right and curses.

“Shit,” he says, stepping back inside. “Let’s go back. We have to try again.”

When they try the second time just two days later, Harvey is nowhere in sight when the elevator’s doors slide open. There are people out there in the hallway, entering the lobby walking past them, but Harvey isn’t among them. So, after their time has run out, they just let the doors slide shut again and return to their own time.

Nothing has changed when they’re back in Benjamin’s apartment. The envelope with the autopsy report is still lying on the far away edge of the coffee table, and Mike sighs.

“It didn’t work, did it?”

“I don’t think so,” Benjamin murmurs and goes to check something on his computer. “No, it did not.”

The third time, they finally get it right. The elevator is empty except for them and then they can see Harvey running towards them. 

“Now,” Mike hisses and bats Benjamin’s hand out of the way, pushing the button to close the door again and again in rapid sequence. “Quick, quick,” he mutters and pushes the button once more. The doors begin to close, and Mike’s heart is beating out of his chest. “Why is this taking so long,” he asks, glancing at the narrowing gap between the two parts of the door. “Fucking close already!”

Finally, finally, the gap closes, and they can hear someone slamming their hands against the door on the outside. 

They’ve done it. 

Mike takes a deep, shaky breath and steps back onto the mat. He nods at Benjamin, and the elevator begins to move.

*****

“No,” is the first word out of Mike’s mouth when they re-materialize in Benjamin’s apartment. “Oh, no.” 

There it is, on the far edge of the coffee table, right where he left it. The envelope. It’s still there.

“No, no, no, no, no…” Mike hurries across the room and picks it up, opens the flap and takes a quick look inside. “No.”

“He must have taken the stairs,” Benjamin says. He walks up to where Mike is standing and places a hand on Mike’s arm. “Never thought he would possibly be able to get there in time. The office is on the tenth floor.”

“Goddamn running,” Mike says, chuckling mirthlessly. He lets the envelope drop back onto the table and runs his hand over his mouth. “Goddamn running…” His knees are trembling and there’s a bottomless pit in his stomach. “I…” He sinks down onto the sofa and shakes his head. “Goddamn running…”

“I need a drink.” Benjamin takes a step backwards and bites his lips.

When Mike looks up, he’s still standing there, pale skin and sunken cheeks. He looks like shit and Mike knows it’s all because of him. All because he’s too stupid to get it right.

“Give me one as well,” Mike says and clears his throat. “Vodka. No scotch.”

Benjamin nods, and before Mike knows it, there’s a glass filled with crystal clear liquid in his hand and Benjamin is sitting next to him on the couch, the vodka bottle standing on a pile of papers in front of them. Without saying a word, Benjamin empties almost half of his glass in one go. He doesn’t even shudder when he swallows the alcohol down.

“We spent the night together,” Mike says before he takes a small sip from his own glass. 

“What?” Benjamin frowns, and Mike turns his head away.

“He—Harvey and I. Before he had to go to prison.”

Benjamin doesn’t say anything, so Mike keeps talking, staring straight ahead. 

“I had broken up with Rachel just a few days earlier, right after Harvey had signed that goddamn deal. She was staying with her parents, and I went over to his place to talk him out of the deal, to convince him that it should be _me_ going to prison, not _him_.” Mike drains his glass and refills it immediately. He pours Benjamin another drink as well when Benjamin holds out his almost empty glass to him. “He wouldn’t hear a word of it. We got into such a terrible argument, I was this close to hitting him, and I’d never…” Mike shakes his head again and snorts. “Before I knew it we were kissing.” He pauses and takes another sip from his drink. He licks his lips and lets his eyes flutter shut for a moment. “He tasted of scotch,” he says and bites his lips. “He tasted…”

“Mike, you really do not have to—” Benjamin starts to speak but Mike interrupts him after only a few words.

“I want to,” he says. “I _want_ to tell you about it. I’ve…” He swallows drily, then he takes another sip of vodka. “I haven’t told anyone before. Nobody knows, just me now.” Mike casts a quick glance at where Benjamin is sitting, but Benjamin isn’t even looking at him. He’s just staring into his glass. 

“I don’t even know who kissed whom, but when we… when it ended, he said to me that he didn’t want to spend his last hours of freedom arguing. He said that he’d rather make some happy memories before he had to go. With me.” He takes a deep breath and drains his glass once more. His ears are beginning to buzz and his vision is getting a little blurry, but maybe that’s just what he needs right now, so he pours himself – and Benjamin, who’s still sitting there next to him, solid and silent – a third drink.

“We didn’t get any sleep that night,” Mike continues, turning the glass in his hands so the liquid swirls around in it. “Not really.” He pauses for a second, then he speaks again. “I had never been with a man before, not like that,” he says. He thought he’d be blushing telling anybody that, let alone Benjamin, but all he feels is emptiness and a lead-like weight on his shoulders. “But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered that night but he and I. It… It was the best night of my life.” He chuckles drily again and brings his glass to his lips once more. “When dawn came we dozed off a little, but just for a few minutes, and then we… and after that we showered and had breakfast together, even though none of us were very hungry. We left everything out on the kitchen counter, cereal, coffee mugs, just like that. It’s not there anymore, someone must have cleaned it away.”

“He locked away a few things in the safe before we left, papers and files from his desk, and just when he was about to open the door he turned to me and said: ‘We’re not going to talk about this again, not before I get out. And then– and then he took my face in his hands, like this, and he kissed me one last time – and then he said ‘I’m never going to let you go.’.”

“He loves you,” Benjamin says after a long silence, and his voice sounds alien to Mike, laced with something he can’t quite put his finger on.

Mike nods. “Yeah,” he croaks. “He does.”

“You are never going to keep him from signing that deal.”

“I know.”

“Then all of this,“ Benjamin gestures around vaguely, and his words come out a bit slurry, “then all of this was for nothing.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, even though all he feels still is that leaden emptiness. “I had to try.”

“Yeah,” Benjamin says, and this is when Mike knows that Benjamin must be getting really drunk. He’d never say “yeah” otherwise. “Because you l—”

Benjamin falls silent mid-word, but an iron clamp of a hand closes around Mike’s left lower arm. 

Mike can feel how tense Benjamin is by the grip of his fingers, and he can feel the energy that’s surging in Benjamin’s body by his grip, even through the fabric of his shirt.

“What?”

“You do. You love him, too.”

Mike just snorts. There’s nothing left to say. 

“It is _you_ you have to convince.”

“What?”

Benjamin isn’t making any sense, he definitely has to be drunk.

Mike is about to tell him exactly that when Benjamin lets go of his arm and sits up straight.

“Listen. It’s _you_ you have to meet. You need to talk to _yourself_.”

Apparently, his expression is full of a thousand questions because Benjamin smacks his lips a little impatiently and tries again.

“You would do that, too, right? You _would_ go to prison for him. To save him.”

“Anything,” Mike whispers, his eyes beginning to prickle. “I’d do _anything_.”


	6. Chapter 6

Mike has just walked out of the conference room after that idiot Alec Diaz has signed his get-out-of-jai-free-deal with that prosecutor when someone steps into his way as if he’d come out of nowhere and makes Mike stop so abruptly he almost stumbles.

“Mike.”

Mike blinks. For a moment he thinks he’s hallucinating, but the man grabs his arm. This is too vivid, too colorful, to real to be anything but, well, real. Mike blinks once more and shakes his head, trying to male sense of the rapid stream of words pouring from that mouth and wafting around him like fine mist. This is when the words stop for a second and the grip around Mike’s arm tightens.

“Mike. You have to listen to me.”

The man with the haggard face and the hollow, burning eyes is breathless, and his fingers dig into the muscles of Mike’s upper arm, hard and painful. “You’ve got to get to Gibbs fast, you have to be there before _he_ can. Hurry. _Run_. You must not let him go to jail, do you understand?”

“Who—”

“Harvey,” the man says. “Harvey is about to turn himself in, he’s on his way over here _right now_ , and you must not let that happen.”

Mike tries to pull his arm free but the other man only holds on tighter. He shouldn’t be here, that man, everything about him being here is wrong, impossible, and Mike feels chilled to the bone by those piercing eyes that beg him for mercy or for something else that is equally out of his reach.

“I—” Mike starts but the man, the impossible stranger, shakes him and takes a step closer, so Mike can smell his stale, tired breath. His eyes bore into Mike’s like bottomless fiery pits, and Mike feels as if he’s falling into nothingness. 

“This is vital. He must not go to jail, do you understand? Under any circumstances. You must _not_ let him go.”

“What—” Mike tries again, but he hisses in pain when the fingers dig even deeper, bruising his skin. His eyes are fixed on the haunted face of the man, his sunken cheeks, his cracked, dry lips and the immeasurable pain in his otherwise completely empty eyes. He’s drawn in by those eyes, he’s devoured by them, swallowed alive, by those eyes that are so strange to him, yet so chillingly familiar.

“He’ll die,” the man whispers, and an ice-cold shiver runs through Mike’s entire body. “If you let him go, he’ll die.”

“How—” Mike says and shakes his head. “This is impossible.”

“He’ll die,” the man says again. “He _has_ died. From where I’ve come from, he already _has_ died.”

Mike’s stomach lurches and he feels like falling, endlessly falling through time and space. 

“Listen, I only have a couple of seconds left. I’m telling you, I’m _begging_ you – don’t let him sign the deal. And _you_ have not much more than a couple of minutes left before he’s here, but you can still beat him to it. Don’t… don’t let him die. _Please_.”

Mike looks into his own eyes and they’re hollow, bottomless wells. There’s nothing left in them but pain and the faintest glitter of a hope born from sheer despair. Then he, Mike, the other Mike, lets go of his arm and takes a step backwards.

“I have to go,” he says. “Benjamin is waiting for me just around the corner. I have to get back.”

“Benjamin,” Mike echoes, and the other Mike nods. 

“Yeah. Now go, hurry. You can still beat him there. Please, _please_ don’t let him die. And he must never find out, so… Never tell him, you understand? He can never know, or…”

The other Mike moves further and further away from him, then he turns and rushes around the corner. 

“I won’t,” Mike says, “I swear I won’t,” but he doesn’t know if he can still hear it.

*****

“So, just to be clear,” Gibbs says and puts one of the papers she’s been holding aside, “ _this_ is the one you want to go with.” She hands him the sheets and takes off her glasses. “You go to prison for two years, your friends go free, and no crying about it once it’s done.”

Mike leans forward a little more, then he looks up.

“One stipulation.”

“I’m not reducing your jail time by one minute,” Gibbs shoots back as soon as Mike has said his piece. 

“That’s not it.” Of course, it’s not, how could it be about _that_ now? “I want you to write in that once we sign you can’t renegotiate with Harvey.”

“I get it.” Gibbs leans back in her chair and stares at Mike through narrowed eyes. “You’re afraid that I’m going to use this to get him take the bullet for you.”

“I’m not afraid of you trying to do that, because I know you will.” Mike sits back as well and crosses his legs. “So, either put it in or we go to verdict.” She’s still hesitating, so Mike adds: “And remember, like you said to me – _tick, tock_.”

*****  
When he’s on his way out of Gibbs’ office, desperate to leave the building and head back to the court house, Harvey’s there in the hallway, running towards him.

“What did you do?” Harvey says, after the shortest pause, panting. 

“I did what I had to do,” Mike replies, a wave of relief washing over him. Harvey is not going to go to jail. “I plead guilty.”

“Bullshit,” Harvey says, still out of breath, and begins to turn around while he’s still speaking. “You don’t plead anything.”

“Harvey,” Mike cuts in before Harvey can leave. “Look at me.” He takes a step towards Harvey. There’s a thin layer of sweat on Harvey’s face, and all Mike can think is that Harvey’s not going to prison, over and over again, Harvey is not going to prison. “It was my crime, it was my choice to make, and I made it. It’s done.”

“Well, I’m going to un-make it.” Harvey’s jaws clench, and his voice takes on that tone that Mike knows so very well. Harvey must be feeling like shit. “Because the judge hasn’t ratified it yet and until she does – nothing is done.” He turns around and starts to walk away, out of the building and to the court house.

_He must not go to jail._

“Harvey, stop.” 

“No, you listen to me,” Harvey snaps and points his finger at Mike. “When you think I’m going to let you do this, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

_He must not go to jail._

“Do what, Mike?”

Suddenly, Rachel is there, right behind him. 

“What did you do?”

“I took the two years.”

The conversation that follows between them rushes past him as if in fast-forward mode as it becomes more and more one-sided, a monologue thrown against him, and most of it barely registers.

Afterwards, he remembers two things. That he has somehow come up with a flimsy excuse of an explanation as to why he took the deal and that Rachel has broken up with him. He stares at the engagement ring in his hands, and all he can think, over and over again, is that Harvey is not going to prison.

He tells Harvey again that it is done about half an hour later in Judge Rall’s chambers, and this time, Harvey seems a bit closer to believing him and to giving in.

The look Harvey gives him when the judge informs him that he has to report to Danbury prison within the next seventy-two hours is a look of pure, naked horror and it shatters Mike to the core, but at least Harvey isn’t going to prison. That is all that counts.

*****

After the confrontation in Harvey’s office the next day, after learning that he’d have been pronounced guilty had they really waited for that jury to come back, had they waited and gone to verdict, Mike knows that Harvey is trying whatever he can to overturn his deal with Gibbs behind his back, but he also knows that there is no way that that is ever going to happen. There is no way on this earth, not even for Harvey, to change what has been fixed.

So, Mike spends the rest of the day and the following one holed up in his apartment while Rachel is staying with her parents or with Donna or with god knows whom. He doesn’t answer the door when it rings, he doesn’t answer the phone, he doesn’t check his messages or his mail. He lives on water and Ritz crackers for those two days, and when the second box of crackers is empty, he has had enough. 

He puts on a jacket, grabs his keys and heads over to Harvey’s place. Harvey isn’t home yet when Mike arrives so he fixes them both a drink and waits. He doesn’t know how much time passes until there’s that sound of a door being unlocked and then those tired footsteps in the hallway, but once Harvey walks into the living room, Mike’s heart misses a beat.

_He is not going to prison._

When he sees Mike sitting there on the sofa, Harvey stops dead in his tracks.

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you with—”

“It’s over,” Mike cuts in. “She left me right after I signed the deal and she didn’t come back. She… She hasn’t been home since then, so I guess she’s staying at her parents. Or at Donna’s maybe, I don’t know. God, I haven’t eaten anything but crackers for two days, I can’t begin to tell you h—”

“Mike,” Harvey says, and Mike can hear that he’s forcing his voice to sound calm and composed. “What are you doing here?”

Mike doesn’t know what to reply to that, so he doesn’t say anything. He wonders why Harvey keeps standing there, in the middle of the room, his gaze weighing Mike down like a vest made of lead. He shakes his head.

“I should go,” he says and slowly rises from the sofa. His eyes wander over the coffee table, the two glasses sitting there next to each other as if it was just any other day, and he scoffs. 

Harvey still doesn’t move when Mike walks first towards and then past him, but once he’s in Mike’s back something is flying past Mike’s head and goes crashing against the kitchen cupboards with a deafening noise.

Shards fly and scotch splashes and from one blink of an eye to the next, Mike’s mouth goes dry and his heart is beating unbelievably fast. Harvey is yelling at him, something about needing to toughen him up for prison, something about how he should have never signed the deal, about how the jury would have pronounced him innocent, and suddenly he’s in Mike’s face, so close Mike can smell him, his cologne, his sweat, his fluttering heartbeat and all the tension surging through him. Harvey keeps pushing him and pushing him until his words blur and Mike’s ears are ringing, his pulse is raising even more and then he’s hitting Harvey, really hitting him, he can feel Harvey’s skin slitting under his knuckles, and Harvey’s defense is barely there, it’s as if he’s laying himself out for Mike, as if he welcomes those blows to his face and stomach, as if he needs this as much as Mike does.

Then there is this moment of pause, a short respite, and Mike’s vision clears. Harvey is lying on the floor, Mike thinks he must have fallen over a footstool, which is standing right between them. He thinks he must have shoved him.

Harvey’s face is bruised and there’s blood on his lips, so Mike must have hit him there as well.

While Mike takes a staggering step backwards and then another, images flash before his eyes, Harvey’s face, pale, lifeless, bruised and battered, cheeks sunken and lips as white as wax. 

That image, that vision that came from somewhere beyond Mike’s reach, makes his knees give in, and he collapses against the stone column and slides down until he’s sitting on the floor. From the corner of his eye he can see Harvey struggling to a half-sitting position. 

Harvey touches his split lip and winces. When he looks at his fingers, he sees the blood.

Mike’s eyes sting as if someone is stabbing into them with white-hot knives, and as much as Mike squeezes them shut he can’t keep the tears from falling, his body from shaking. He can hear himself sobbing.

_This is not going to happen to Harvey, he’s not going to prison. This is never going to happen._

*****


	7. Chapter 7

“Mike, please,” Harvey’s voice cuts through the haze with so much gentleness and reassurance it makes Mike stomach twist. “Let’s call Gibbs.”

“I can’t,” Mike says, his voice barely a whisper. _Not in a million years_ , he thinks, _never_ , and _over my dead body_ , and then he says it again. “I can’t, Harvey. I can’t.”

After a long silence, Harvey nods. He scrambles to his feet, and Mike does the same.

“Why?” Harvey asks, straightening his jacket. 

“Please don’t ask me that,” Mike murmurs, running his fingers through his hair.

“I could use that drink now,” Harvey says and makes his way over to the coffee table. He picks up the untouched glass and hands it to Mike, then he fixes himself a drink as well. Without saying a word, he raises his glass to Mike and drains it almost completely with one long swallow. The slight flinch when he takes a deep breath afterwards tells Mike that the alcohol must be burning on his lips.

Mike takes a sip as well. All his muscles ache as he slowly sits down on the couch.

“Why?” Harvey asks again, and his eyes lock with Mike’s. 

“Because I l—,” Mike murmurs, but then he interrupts himself and takes another sip. “Because I did this. Like I’ve said before – it was my crime. Because I’m not letting you go to prison for me.”

_I’m not letting you die in my stead._

“It was _our_ crime,” Harvey says, smiling faintly as he takes a step closer to Mike. He tilts his head and his smile broadens a little. 

Mike rises to his feet, his glass still clutched in his hand.

“I’m glad we’re not fighting anymore,” he says and, like with a déjà vu, it feels as if he’s heard those words before. “I don’t want to fight with you during my last few hours of freedom. I… I just don’t want to fight.”

“Me neither,” Harvey says and touches his glass to Mike’s. He slowly raises it to his lips and takes a long sip, his eyes never leaving Mike’s.

Mike’s movements mirror Harvey’s, and when Harvey takes his glass from his hand, his fingertips are warm against Mike’s skin, and Mike’s stomach drops.

Harvey sets the glasses down, and Mike swallows.

“I’d rather make some happy memories,” he murmurs. “Before I go, I mean. With you.”

“You would,” Harvey says and brushes his thumb gently over Mike’s tingling lips. It’s not so much a question as it is an assertation.

Mike nods. “Yeah. I would.”

Harvey’s finger brushes over his lips again and he can’t help but open them a little.

“Hmmmmm,” Harvey hums and takes the tiniest step closer to Mike. His other hand moves to the small of Mike’s back and comes to rest there, warm and solid.

“Is this going to hurt?” Mike asks, letting his gaze fall to Harvey’s damaged lip. 

Harvey shakes his head. “So, you would?”

“Yeah,” Mike breathes, and his eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Are we really going to do this?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Harvey says, the pressure of his hand against the small of Mike’s back increasing just the tiniest bit. “If you—”

Mike shakes his head softly. He longs to let his tongue dart out and touch its tip to the tip of Harvey’s thumb. 

“No,” he whispers. “I want this. I’ve wanted this for so long. I…” He falls silent and bites his lips. Then he takes a deep breath and speaks again. “As a matter of fact I wouldn’t even know how to have an idea how not to want this.”

He falls silent again when Harvey leans in and lets his lips brush over Mike’s. He tastes of scotch and of the many hours of a very long day and of a sweetness that makes Mike’s chest constrict. 

Their kiss is slow and gentle at first, Harvey’s lips playfully caressing his, and when Harvey slowly runs the tip of his tongue along Mike’s lower lip, Mike gasps.

Mike’s cheeks are burning, and when Harvey breaks the kiss, when he pulls away, Mike can’t open his eyes at first. He pulls his lips between his teeth and bites down. He’s already out of breath and, as he notices when Harvey shifts, already more than half hard.

“Hey,” Harvey says and cups Mike’s cheek with his right hand. He runs his thumb over Mike’s cheekbone, and when Mike’s eyes finally flutter open and meet Harvey’s, Mike’s stomach lurches and his cock twitches in his pants. 

“Oh god,” Mike whispers, and the smile fades from Harvey’s face. 

“Mike.”

Harvey leans in and kisses Mike again, just very softly, but this time when he tries to pull away, Mike is having none of that.

His arms wrap around Harvey’s waist, and before he knows it, he’s kissing Harvey with everything he’s got. He opens his mouth, inviting Harvey’s tongue in, and Harvey is kissing him back like there is no tomorrow, his hands cupping Mike’s face just like that, and he tastes of scotch and of hunger and of so much more it makes Mike dizzy with need.

“I love you,” he murmurs into the kiss, gasping between the words, nipping at Harvey’s lips again and again. “Oh god, I love you. I love you. I love you so much…”

Harvey silences Mike again and again with hungry kisses, but his words keep echoing Mike’s in a way that sends shivers through Mike’s entire body. “I know, I know, god, I know, Mike, oh god, Mike, I know…”

Mike’s mind is consumed by Harvey’s presence, by his hunger and his need, and Mike’s body yields to Harvey, it melts against Harvey’s chest and lies itself bare before Harvey’s hands and lips. 

It’s a tangle of hands and clothes for a while but then they’re both naked from the waist up and finally skin touches skin. The contact is so intense Mike feels as if Harvey is scorching him, and the moan that falls from Harvey’s lips onto Mike’s shows that Harvey feels very much the same.

Harvey is as hard as Mike is and when they shift and grind their still covered groins against each other, Mike is afraid for a second that he might come just there and then. He hisses and stills.

Harvey’s movements cease as well and he leans forward, touching his forehead against Mike’s. 

Mike’s cock hardens even further and he can’t help but chuckle. Harvey joins in, breathless and with burning cheeks, and a second later they’re kissing again, ready to drown in each other without ever resurfacing again.

When Harvey’s hands travel from Mike’s ass to the buckle of Mike’s belt, Mike catches them in his and breaks the kiss, more than just a little out of breath.

Harvey pulls back a little, tilts his head and frowns. 

Mike shakes his head.

“I just…” He chuckles again and then takes a few calming breaths, the skin of Harvey’s hands so very soft against his fingertips. “It’s just that I’ve never done this before.”

“Do you need me to stop?” Harvey’s voice is gentle and low, but there’s a slight vibration humming in his words that sets Mike’s entire skin on fire.

Mike shakes his head again, and when he lets go of Harvey’s hands, they stay just where they are, steady, warm and real. 

“No, but…” He falls silent and closes his eyes.

“I will,” Harvey whispers and catches Mike’s mouth in a slow, lazy kiss. “We have all the time in the world.”

Mike nods and inhales shakily, Harvey’s scent flooding his senses until it’s all there is, until this, he and Harvey, are the center of the universe, just like it has always been, just the way it should be.

Harvey’s hands are warm and steady and breathtakingly real as they set to work and finish taking off the rest of Mike’s clothing. For a second, Mike dares to open his eyes, and there he is, Harvey, kneeling in front of Mike and untying his shoes. 

Harvey chooses the same moment to raise his head and look up at Mike and the look in his eyes takes Mike’s breath away. His cock swells, and he can feel how a drop of pre-come oozes from its tip. Harvey hasn’t even touched him there, not really, and he’s already so aroused he could spend himself right there and then. 

Mike allows his eyelids to flutter shut again, but when Harvey’s fingers close around his erection, when there’s something warm and wet at the tip of his cock, he can’t help but open them again and look.

Harvey is still looking at him as he lets the tip of his tongue swirl around Mike’s crown, and his eyes never leave Mike’s as he closes his lips around Mike’s cock and slowly, slowly takes him in.

“Oh my god,” Mike whispers and tilts his head back, biting his lips. He’s so close already, so incredibly close, and just the idea of what Harvey is doing to him—

“Stop,” he pants, and his fingers tangle in Harvey’s hair, desperate to pull Harvey away. Only, he can’t bring himself to do that, it feels too good, Harvey’s lips around his cock and his tongue doing that thing to the vein running along the underside and then Harvey sucks a little and—

“Stop, stop, stop, oh god, please stop,” Mike mutters, but Harvey just hums around him, drawing a long, desperate moan from Mike’s lips. “Oh god, close, so close, if… I’m going to… Ahhhhhh…”

Mike can basically feel Harvey grinning around his cock, and when he’s sure that he has passed the point of no return, when he can already feel his orgasm building inside of him, Harvey pulls away. 

“No, no, no, no, nooooo…” Mike’s hips buck and his grip on Harvey’s hair tightens. He squeezes his eyes shut, and his mouth opens in a silent scream. “Oh fuck, oh fuck…”

“What?” Harvey looks up at him and grins broadly when Mike’s eyes open again, his lips dark and glistening. “You _did_ say stop.”

Still teetering on the very edge of coming, Mike breaks into a breathless laughter and shoves Harvey’s head a little to the side, letting go of his hair. 

“Dick.”

Harvey’s grin broadens even more and he places a teasing kiss on the tip of Mike’s cock where another drop of pre-come has begun to pool. He licks his lips, and Mike sucks in a sharp breath. He’s still so maddeningly close, waves of arousal washing through his body but never cresting, and the image Harvey makes, oh god, the image…

Then, from one moment to the next, Harvey is on his feet again, kicks off his shoes, opens his trousers and lets them drop to the floor. They pool around his ankles and expose a pair of steel grey boxer briefs with a pulsing bulge inside and a suspicious wet spot where the tip of Harvey’s cock nudges against its confinement.

Mike can’t help but stare. As if in slow-motion, he reaches out and cups Harvey through the thin layer of cloth. He’s so warm and hard against the palm of Mike’s hand, and when Mike flexes his fingers a little, Harvey moans.

“God, Mike,” Harvey murmurs, his own hand covering Mike’s. “You’re killing me…”

Harvey flexes his hips and pushes his cock against Mike’s palm, spreading his fingers and gathering Mike’s hand in his. 

“Let’s take this to bed.”

Their eyes meet, and Mike nods. They are really going to do this, and the realization feels like a fall from the heavens. His heart is beating out of his chest, but Harvey’s hand holding his keeps him grounded. 

Harvey doesn’t let go of his hand until they’re in the bedroom, and Mike has to shake his head, smiling, at how ridiculously romantic the whole situation is. 

When they’re standing at the foot of the bed, Harvey pulls Mike into his arms again and kisses him so deeply that Mike thinks he might pass out, not from lack of oxygen but from sheer and utter bliss. There’s nowhere he’d rather be than here, nothing he’d rather do than being swept away by Harvey’s kisses.

“I want you,” Harvey murmurs against Mike’s lips and gives him the gentlest nudge, but that is all Mike needs. 

He sinks down onto the mattress and scoots backwards until he’s lying down completely.

Harvey is between his legs and nudges his legs a little, so Mike bends them at the knees, spreading himself open for Harvey. Harvey licks his fingers and runs them along Mike’s crack and over his hole and then he lets them linger right there, right at the entrance to Mike’s body, just the faintest pressure, but it’s enough to make Mike see stars.

“Oh god,” he moans, and his fingers fist into the fabric of the sheets. His cock swells to an impossible hardness, and when it twitches, Mike can feel how the tip leaves a sticky wet spot against his stomach. 

Harvey is kneeling between Mike’s legs, his own cock as hard as Mike’s, dark red and beautiful, and the look on his face knocks the air from Mike’s chest. He’s staring at his fingers, at Mike’s entrance, and his face shines with reverence.

“You’re so beautiful,” Mike whispers, and Harvey looks up. His eyes are unfocussed for a short moment, but then they light up brighter than the sun, and a faint smile plays around his lips.

“Look who’s talking,” Harvey murmurs, his eyes darting back to his fingers and then back to Mike’s face. “You’re exquisite.” His fingertips press against Mike’s entrance again, a little more this time, and Mike can feel how his muscles yield to Harvey’s gentle teasing.

Harvey breaches him just with the very tip of his middle finger, and Mike already feels as if he’s flying. 

“Good?”

It is as if the vibrations of Harvey’s voice go from his fingertip right to the core of Mike’s existence. 

Mike moans and bites his lips. “Yeah,” he pants, and Harvey pushes in a little further. “Amazing, god, feels amazing…”

“More?”

Mike nods eagerly, and Harvey pushes in another little bit further, but then he pulls out, causing Mike to moan with the loss.

“Hey! What—”

“Relax,” Harvey smiles, sitting up and reaching for the bedside table’s drawer. “I’m not stopping, I just want—” He pulls the drawer open and fumbles around in it for a bit, leaning over Mike. 

Mike lets go of the sheets and lets his hands travel down Harvey’s back until they reach Harvey’s ass. He cups Harvey’s cheeks and squeezes them a bit, and Harvey’s hips flex in response.

“This.” Harvey drops something onto the mattress and then he leans down to capture Mike’s lips in a hungry, messy kiss. His cock brushes against Mike’s skin, and Mike pulls him closer until he’s almost lying on top of him. 

Harvey moans and sinks down the last little distance, covering Mike’s body with his own. 

Mike’s arms wrap around Harvey’s torso, and Mike just holds Harvey close for a moment, their hearts fluttering against each other’s ribcages and Harvey’s breath hot and wet on Mike’s pulse point. When Harvey’s tongue darts out and touches Mike’s skin, Mike is sure that this can’t possibly get any better, but then Harvey flexes his hips, and their cocks slide against each other, causing the most exquisite friction, and Mike’s hands race down Harvey’s back as swiftly as his breath pours from his lips. His hips jerk in response and his fingers dig into Harvey’s cheeks, and when he moans so very close to Harvey’s ear, Mike can feel Harvey’s cock twitching against his and the shiver that runs through Harvey’s body. 

Harvey’s hips begin to undulate in a slow, steady rhythm, and he presses his forehead against Mike’s shoulder, his lips barely touching Mike’s skin anymore. 

Mike is moaning continuously now, his hips sharing Harvey’s rhythm, and his arousal surges through a never before experienced level. His whole body is thrumming with it, and from one second to the next he knows that there’s no turning back.

“I—” he pants, but there are no words anymore, not really. “Fuck, I—”

When Harvey’s hips stutter just the slightest bit, Mike’s whole body goes rigid, and his arousal peaks. Time stands still for what feels like an eternity and then Mike spills himself between their bodies, hot and sticky and endlessly, and Harvey holds him through it, murmuring praise and encouragement into his ear, into his soul, urging him on and catching him as he falls.

Harvey’s movements slow gradually and slowly, very slowly, Mike is able to catch his breath. Harvey’s lips find his, and Harvey kisses the life out of Mike till Mike is beginning to harden again.

“God, you’re killing me,” Mike whispers, his voice laced with new arousal and need. “How…”

“Let me…” Harvey kisses against Mike’s clavicle, stilling his hips almost completely. “Let me…”

He scrambles to his knees again and reaches for the tube of lube he had dropped there earlier. His fingers tremble slightly as he squeezes some of that clear gel onto their tips. He brings his hand between Mike’s legs and spready the lube along his crack, then he repeats his actions. Carefully, he breaches Mike’s body again, and Mike can feel his muscles clench.

He wills his body to relax and it opens to Harvey gradually.

“God, you’re tight,” Harvey murmurs, his eyes never leaving his hand. “This is…” His voice trails off, dissolved in awe and concentration, and Mike closes his eyes.

Harvey takes his time preparing Mike, fingering him open bit by bit until he has three fingers inside and Mike has been reduced to a begging mess. Harvey’s lips are dark read from all the bites and kisses, and a thin layer of sweat is covering his face.

He looks so painfully alive it makes Mike breath catch in his throat.

“Please,” Mike moans for the hundredth time, and this time Harvey withdraws his fingers and nods. He sits back on his heels and then reaches for the condom that’s lying next to the lube and makes quick work of the foil wrapping. When he’s finished rolling it over his straining erection, he closes his fingers around its base, squeezing down and biting his lips. 

Mike grins.

“Good?”

“You have no idea,” Harvey murmurs. Then he picks up the tube again and coats his cock with lube. He positions himself and locks eyes with Mike once more.

Mike nods. “Please,” he says again and spreads his legs a little further. “I want you to.”

Harvey pushes forward a little, and the tip of his cock presses against Mike’s tight entrance, the pressure increasing subtly but steadily until the muscles give way and Harvey breaches Mike’s body bit by little, maddening bit.

It hurts, his entrance being stretched like that for the first time, but Mike savors every second of it. It feels as if Harvey is truly claiming him, marking him as his own.

When he is fully sheathed, Harvey stills. 

Mike can feel him throbbing inside of his body and that is the most intimate thing Mike has ever felt. 

“I love you,” he whispers and watches as Harvey squeezes his eyes shut and bites his lips. Mike can’t decide if it’s pain or pleasure that blossoms on Harvey’s face, most likely it’s both. His chest swells with a mixture of emotions that is equally as confusing and equally as overwhelming.

And then Harvey starts to move. Slowly and barely perceptible at first, teasing Mike to the brink of another orgasm, then, when Mike has come down again a little, Harvey’s hips find a gradually accelerating pace.

Harvey is trembling with the effort to hold back, Mike can feel that, so when he thinks Harvey can’t take much more, he tightens around him and grabs hold of his upper arms, digging his fingers into Harvey’s skin hard. 

Harvey moans, and his hips jerk erratically.

“Mike, don’t—”

Mike clenches around Harvey again, drawing a long, low moan from Harvey’s lips, and when he does it again, Harvey freezes in mid motion and his eyes go wide. 

“Mike,” he gasps, and a wave runs through his body that sweeps not only him but also Mike away.

Mike can feel how Harvey comes inside of him, Harvey’s cock swelling and then pulsing, and the sound Harvey makes as he begins to come, sends Mike over the edge as well. 

His come is hot and sticky between their bodies and nothing, nothing in this world or any other has ever felt better as this, as coming with Harvey like this, as Harvey coming with him.

It takes them a long time to come down again, and they prolong that by kissing and touching and moving, small and smaller surges of climax shooting through them, their names on each other’s lips constantly.

Mike moans when Harvey has to pull out, and Harvey disposes of the condom as quickly as possible before he rolls onto his back and pulls Mike flush against him.

Their legs entwine and Mike pants millions of kisses onto Harvey’s chest, Harvey’s fingers caressing his skin like a summer breeze in the night.

“I—” Mike kisses Harvey again, and Harvey hums low in his throat. “I want to do this again. As soon as possible.”

Harvey chuckles and places a kiss on the crown of Mike’s head. “Give me a minute…”

Mike can feel how a huge smile spreads on his face and he lets his fingertips brush over Harvey’s dark nipple. 

“I’ll be out and back here with you again in no time,” he whispers, and Harvey tenses at his words. “I promise. It will feel like nothing, those two years. And then—”

“I’ll have you out _long_ before that,” Harvey cuts in and tightens his embrace. “That _I_ promise.”

“Hmmm.” Mike kisses Harvey’s chest again before he props himself up on one elbow and his eyes search for Harvey’s.

“We can do this,” Mike says when their gazes meet, and Harvey swallows thickly before he nods.

“I didn’t think I could,” Harvey admits quietly, looking away for a short moment. “But now…”

“I’ll be out again in no time,” Mike says again. He leans down and catches Harvey’s mouth in a gentle, languid kiss. “But I want you again before…”

“Yeah,” Harvey kisses back. “Just close your eyes for a moment, we still have all the time in the world, remember?”

“Hmmm,” Mike makes again, snuggling up to Harvey and closing his eyes. “Yeah, we do.”

*****

They make love not just one more time that night but twice. There is no other word than worship to describe how Harvey’s movements and touches feel to Mike when he takes him for the second time. Harvey worships him with every caress, with every kiss, with every moan and with every word, he worships his body, his heart and his soul with everything he has to give and with everything he is, making them one with every breath they take and with every beat of their hearts. The closeness and intimacy that wraps around them like a cocoon is so intense that Mike loses complete sense of where he ends and where Harvey begins.

Mike cries out when Harvey’s fingers grab hold of his cock and push him closer and closer to the edge with erratic, trembling strokes. Harvey’s words coax him, they plead with him, they intoxicate him, and when he finally falls, they carry him like wings, his whole being suspended between one second and the next for eons while the world around him explodes with sensation and love.

The next time, a little while later, Harvey asks Mike to be inside of him, and if Mike has thought that it couldn’t get any better than feeling Harvey coming inside of him, he is proven wrong when he enters Harvey for the very first time.

Harvey’s name is a prayer on his lips when he spills himself so incredibly deep inside of Harvey’s tight heat, and his own name echoes through his mind for an endless time after Harvey has spent himself for Mike.

As the slowly awakening morning casts a pale gray light onto their naked bodies, Harvey pulls the covers over them, and Mike’s eyes flutter shut.

“Close your eyes for a bit, sleep for a little while,” Harvey whispers, and even though Mike tries his hardest to open his eyes again, to keep them open, to keep looking at Harvey’s softly glowing face and to watch his fingertips drawing lazy patterns on Harvey’s chest, the movements of his fingers slow and his eyes keep falling shut again, heavy with warmth and satisfaction, serenaded by the steady rhythm of Harvey’s heartbeat pulsing through his mind.

*****

“I love you, too,” Harvey says the next morning, right when they’re about to leave, half-empty cereal bowls and dirty coffee mugs left behind on the kitchen counter, right before he opens the door. He’s calm and composed, yet there’s a fire in his words that burns Mike’s heart to the core. This is when he knows, even more than he has known before, that he is doing the right thing. That it’s not only worth it all, but that it has been inevitable from the very moment they first met. He knows that this, he knows that Harvey and he, that they’re a fixed point in time, and that everything they went through, now, in the past and in the future, that everything that lies ahead of them, all the pain, all the obstacles, they’re all worth it.

This is what they were always meant to be.

Together.


	8. Epilogue

Benjamin shifts in his chair and clears his throat. 

_Here we go_ , Mike thinks, and for a moment his and Benjamin’s eyes lock. There is that same look in Benjamin’s eyes that Mike has found in them about a year ago when he had first come back to the firm after his time in prison: profound and utter recognition.

Benjamin knows, just as Mike does, and the further that bizarre, impossible meeting in that courthouse hallway has been lying in the past, the deeper that knowledge has grown. 

The understanding between him and Benjamin, the shared pain and the desperate struggle to undo what had seemed carved in stone, those sleepless nights, those endless amounts of stale, greasy pizza and all those cans of Red Bull, they have forged a bond between them that feels as profound and as deep as anything else Mike has ever felt.

Except, of course, for the love that he and Harvey share.

Benjamin rises and clinks his spoon to his glass. There’s still a little champagne left in it, so it doesn’t ring as brightly as it could have, and for a split second, Benjamin frowns.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says and his voice breaks a little, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, family, friends, the married couple.”

Hands clap in applause and glasses are raised in toast.

“The married couple!”

“When Mike asked me to be his best man,” Benjamin continues when the cheering has subsided a little, “my first reaction was to ask him why, because weren’t they married already? But then I remembered. And, of course, I accepted the honor and became Mike’s best man. Maybe you thought –“ he turns and looks down at Mike for a short moment “– that I hesitated, but I sincerely hope you know that that was not what I was doing.”

Mike can feel his lips curl into a smile.

“I knew,” he says and nods at Benjamin. “I know.”

“It has been the easiest, the most rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced, being your best man, and that includes being the first person to discover that time is, in fact, dilatable. Theoretically,” he adds after an almost imperceptible pause.

The whole room breaks into a round of applause. Everyone remembers the sensation Benjamin’s groundbreaking discovery has caused in the scientific community and far beyond that. Most people had been surprised by the fact that Benjamin had been conducting all that work, all that research and all those efforts in that field of expertise in private and that he must have done so for years, but Mike, of course, hadn’t been surprised one bit. By then, he had been able to remember more than just the taste of stale pizza and Red Bull.

“Thank you,” Benjamin says, blushing, and Mike can’t help but grin. So typical of his friend to brag about his achievement first and then be shy and almost embarrassed about it.

“Thank you. Like I said, this is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced, witnessing the marriage of the two of you. It’s because – and I am certain that everybody in this room shares this notion with me – it has always seemed to me that your love for each other transcends not only space but also time. Spacetime as well, of course, but I won’t go into details about this lest you want a room full of sound asleep wedding guests.”

Everyone chuckles, there are even a few full-on laughs, and Mike exhales. Despite his uneasiness when it comes to speaking in front of people, Benjamin has got this. This is going so much better than his acceptance speech had gone when he had been awarded the Fundamental Physics Prize just a few months earlier in recognition for what is now known to the scientific world as the Reale Constant.

“It always seemed to me,” Benjamin carries on, “that the two of you,“ he raises his glass to first Harvey and then to Mike “have always belonged together, that you always will belong together, no matter where in time and space you may be. You will always find each other and you will always end up here. In every story and in every universe.” 

He takes a deep breath and looks back at the wedding party. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, friends, family – to Harvey and Mike. Together forever.”

Everyone raises their glasses and chimes in. 

“Harvey and Mike!” And –

_“Together forever.”_

 

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [sal-si-puedes](http://sal-si-puedes.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Come and say "Hi!"!


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